I had a vision that somewhere inside the new stimulus spending would be a small mountain of assistance within The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act for nature photographers, especially after meeting so many of you at the NANPA conference in Albuquerque last week. I contacted Victoria Hutter at The National Endowment for the Arts to ask about how they plan to allocate the new money they are receiving. I explained that many photographers are in dire need of financial help in order to continue with important projects documenting nature, conservation, animal behavior, travel, culture, climate change and other relevant cause topics and programs.
I went on to say that many publications and organizations previously assigning and/or acquiring photography have either folded or suffered severe setbacks, leaving photographers to abandon projects because they cannot afford to continue without the backing of traditional outlets for their work. I stressed how we need to quickly find alternate resourcing. Will the NEA help us?
Here is Ms. Hutter’s response:
Dear Jain: Thank you for your thoughtful note. Unfortunately, the NEA does not award individual grants, except through literature fellowships, since we were barred from Congress by doing so in 1997. So I’m afraid we won’t be able to assist your colleagues. In addition, if you look through our web site, you’ll note that 40% of all grant making funds goes to state arts agencies, plus we serve such a wide range of organizations that focusing on one group, such as nature photographers isn’t practical.
But I wish you all the best in your efforts.
After thanking her, she added: States and locals are definitely your better contacts for this. In case it’s helpful, here’s a list of state arts agencies: www.arts.gov.
Onward.
(Related, but twice removed: Chief Official White House photographer Pete Souza is on the job. A link to a photo gallery tracing the path of the ARRA is here, but I couldn’t get it to launch. Maybe the story hasn’t started just yet. )