The Times ran a profile of the nightlife photographer Patrick McMullan on Wednesday, and I’d like to hurl a Launch Stalker J’accuse! in its general direction.
Before pooping on Laura Holson’s writing, however, I disclaim that her profile gets the big picture mostly right, and Holson got some juicy nuggets. Also, Patrick McMullan is a bona fide nice guy and hard-working photographer.
Now with the disclaiming in the can, here’s an appetizer, a quick drive-by for you:
“In recent years, PatrickMcMullan.com, his Web site, has become an on-line destination for fashion insiders curious about parties they missed, like a recent soiree for The Wooster Group, an art collective, where Mr. McMullan snapped, among others, Frances McDormand,Laurie Anderson and Mikhail Baryshnikov.”
Holson wastes no time misrepresenting McMullan’s website readership and their rationale for logging on. Fashion insiders are one of a number of constituencies who visit it. I also wonder if the bulk of McMullan’s page-views come from “insiders curious about parties they missed,” as opposed to insiders who were at the parties and want to see pictures of themselves, and then the friends they e-mail the links to. (And what do The Wooster Group, Frances McDormand, or Mikhail Baryshnikov have to do with fashion?)
Her Times mini-bio is here. She used to be a stock-broker. Looks like her bio misrepresents her beat.
Behold, the charges:
Reporting Somewhat Undermines Story’s Thesis
The main thrust of the article is that Patrick’s success is attributable to his client- and subject-friendly approach to party photography, which is true for the most part. The problem is, to illustrate this, Holson writes, “If a client doesn’t like a photograph, Mr. McMullan will remove it from his Web site for a fee.”
I don’t know if charging someone to take down a bad photo is more client-friendly than, for example, refusing to take down an unflattering shot, but I am not aware of any other photographer who charges to take bad photos down. I’m not criticizing McMullan, but to cite that as a client-friendly business practice seems a bit daft (see Gawker post here).
Mawkish, Cloying Prose
“Mr. McMullan doesn’t walk into a room. He bounds. He is buoyant, loud and, if he sees something he likes — the purposefully frayed collar of a satin jacket or a distinctive hat — he touches it and compliments its owner.”
Or …
“Oh, you look gorgeous!” [McMullan] shouted as he knelt and directed his Nikon at Daphne Guinness, the heiress turned fashion muse who tottered on six-inch platform heels at the Bergdorf event while preening in a sheer-backed dress designed by Akris for its fall 2010 collection. He cooed over the azure ribbon wrapped around the skunk streaks of Ms. Guinness’s blond [sic?] and black mane. He complimented the fit of her dress, running his finger along the hem. (Wary onlookers, by contrast, kept their distance.) “Just beautiful!” Mr. McMullan said, standing back for a fuller view. Flash! Snap! Click!”
Or …
“They looked startled: their eyes as big as Japanese Daruma dolls as he pressed their hips together. “Closer! Closer!” he shouted, his hands flapping like the wings of a duck. “You are so gorgeous! So beautiful,” he said. Click! Flash! Pop!”
More like Cringe! Gag! Barf!
Looking at her Michael Musto profile from early January (more on that in a moment) and this profile of Vogue editor at large Andre Leon Talley, she seems to have a gift for capturing dialog that makes you want to stab yourself in the neck.
Difficulties Characterizing Reality
“Today, most grin-and-shoot shutterbugs have given way to the “gotcha” paparazzi, who get $10,000 for a shot of Russell Crowe throwing a punch or Lindsay Lohan passed out in the back seat of a car.”
First, Holson conflates two breeds of photographer: the paparazzo and the event photographer. Second, while the market for celebrity images is probably larger now than it was 5 years ago, it’s not clear that this growth has come at the expense of nightlife photography, as Holson writes. If anything, I’d say that nightlife photography is a waxing rather than waning genre, as evidenced by sites like Guest of a Guest.
McMullan is part of a growing army, not a shrinking one, and — shock — he’s really not the only one who is nice to the people who sign his paychecks. Which brings us tidily to our next point …
Laura Holson Seems to Have a Lazy Reporting and Formulaic Writing Problem
As I was preparing to write this I looked at another article of Holson’s, the profile of Michael Musto that ran on January 31. If you read that article, you can’t help but notice a few similarities between the Musto and the McMullan profiles.
Let’s do a quick side-by-side
Musto Paragraph 1:
“But one way or another, Michael Musto — who has chronicled the lives of drag queens, club kids, and an array of freaks and celebrities for The Village Voice for 25 years — still turns heads.”
McMullan Paragraph 2:
“That is the wisdom of Patrick McMullan, the former Studio 54 party boy turned society chronicler who for three decades has photographed everyone from Upper East Side society matrons to downtown night crawlers and club freaks.”
Musto Paragraph 5:
“But Mr. Musto, who is 54, defies the definition of a modern-day celebrity gossip.”
McMullan Paragraph 4:
“Mr. McMullan seems like a character out of an earlier era, when getting your picture in the newspaper was something to be proud of, not feared.”
The “throw-back to a different era” trope may be accurate, but it’s kinda sloppy to pen two pieces that are so similar in their structure and their take on the respective subjects.
But wait, it gets better.
After I read the Musto profile, I googled Holson. This is the second item that pops up in the search results: “Lazy journalism alert: Laura M. Holson edition.”
That post charges Holson with dubious analysis and sloppy sourcing in a piece of hers about movie box office declines. I can’t vouch for the accuracy of those posts, but based on what I’ve read of her work at the Times, that post’s claim is credible.
The Swipe at Gawker
Let’s revisit this passage, which struck me as odd: “But instead of relenting to the pressure of TMZ and Gawker, Mr. McMullan seems like a character out of an earlier era, when getting your picture in the newspaper was something to be proud of, not feared.”
Gawker? Gawker instead of, say, Perez Hilton or the Post in that list of two sites? I concede there may be some room to argue here, but I think of Gawker as more of a downstream aggregator of those photos, not as an originator. Gawker is also not a purely celebrity-driven site, unlike any number of other sites she could have picked. In a world without the gotcha shots, Gawker would fare better than a lot of other titles.
Furthermore, lost somewhere in the azure fields of Holson’s purple prose is the fact that the two photographers linked to Gawker — Nikola Tamindzic formerly and myself more recently — primarily shot events and parties for Gawker, just like Patrick does, not the dreaded gotcha photography of which she scribbles.
So, that is all.
