Enabling and Empowering Lens-based Workers: An Analysis of the Photo Bill of Rights

ABSTRACT

In June 2020, representatives of eight photography organizations addressed ongoing challenges to the industry by introducing the “Photo Bill of Rights,” asserting “the rights of all lens-based workers and defining actions that build a safer, healthier, more inclusive, and transparent industry.” The bill centers what “lens-based workers” are owed by the media organizations that employ them. This study analyzes the bill’s contents and the explicit and implicit values within it, finding that the bill presents a normative view of the work environment lens-based workers should expect as a baseline. In so doing, the bill connects what lens-based workers owe their respective publics to what their employers owe those same workers. The bill highlights the enabling environment that these workers need to satisfy their obligations to the public. The bill reminds employers of their duty to create an equitable environment that can enable the fulfillment of public responsibility.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ Notably, these trends around the restructuring of labor are endemic across the creative industries (Duffy, 2017; Hesmondhalgh, 2013; McRobbie, 2018; Neff, 2012), reflective of wider transformations in political economy globally (Standing, 2011).