From the Cohen Brothers to Jake and Dinos ­Chapman, collaborative work is increasingly ­popular in the creative industries, and photo­graphy is no exception. Photographers, sometimes with ­retouchers and production specialists, are ­partnering up in pairs – or more – to create art, advertising and documentary work, and sharing the money they earn between them.

Why? For a variety of reasons, not least ­because they find it more productive for sharing ideas, pooling resources and solving problems. But, fundamentally, it’s because they don’t ­believe any photographer ever works entirely alone, and they have merely formalised their relationships. “There’s a mythology of the photographer/author/artist which I reject,” says Adam ­Broomberg, of celebrated duo Broomberg and Chanarin.

“Photography’s so full of those kinds of biographies of the ‘genius photographer’, the lone predator with the sharply tuned eye and amazing sense of timing. It’s very male, athletic, macho and sexy. You’ve got to distance yourself from all that.”

“People tend to think of photography as the act of pushing the button, but of course there’s much more to it than that,” adds Pedro Aguilar, of Diver Aguilar. “People are getting away from the 19th ­century idea of the artist alone in the world, away from everything else, and becoming more open to other people and what they can offer.”

Technology and online communications has precipitated this trend. From crowd sourcing to online communities, people have got used to working together more openly than ever before, and so collaboration is part of a wider cultural shift. The collective, once thought buried among the faded idealism of the 1970s and 1980s, has been ­reappropriated and reborn.

Reed+Rader
Pamela Reed and Matthew Rader are probably as close as it’s possible to be – a couple since 2002, they live together and work together, and they do both in the same live/work space. They even speak to me together by phone from New York, finishing each others’ sentences and occasionally talking at the same time. “We’re in the same room 24 hours a day,” they laugh. “There’s no line in our heads between Pamela and Matt and Reed+Rader, and no divide between our personal and work lives. Even our friends are people we work with.”

The pair met at the Art Institute in Philadelphia, where Reed originally studied web design and Rader interiors. Both decided to transfer to photography, and they started working together “from literally the first photographs we took. Before we were Reed+Rader, we were always together”, says Reed. “Even when we were working on separate projects, the other one was always there,” adds Rader. “It just came very naturally.”

A year in, they formalised the partnership and started carving out a name for themselves at the cutting edge of fashion photography. That status was confirmed when they were asked to shoot for Pop magazine, but their non-photographic backgrounds ensure they are pushing the boundaries online too, using stop-motion, video, moving illustrations and, most recently, 3D. “Pamela is a better stylist and knows the web stuff better,” says Rader. “I have a better hold on Flash and 3D. But because we’re together all the time we can always work things out.”

The pair started out shooting large format, and would literally get under the curtain together behind the kit. In the past year they’ve moved to digital capture, and they now use one camera and look at the results on screen. They discuss ideas together openly on set and argue “all the time” – which can be tricky if there are other people around, but never a big problem, says Rader.

“One has to pitch ideas to the other, and the other always has the power of veto,” he adds. “But in general, I’d say we like the same things and want the same things. We’ve been working together for five or six years, so often find we have the same idea at the same time now.”

“There are days when we are shooting when I don’t have to say anything to him, and vice versa,” says Reed. “A model might walk out and I don’t like the hair, and I’ll look at him and know he’s thinking the same thing. It’s great there are two of us – it’s two pairs of hands. We never have to hire assistants.”

On set Reed gives the appearance of being in control – they jokingly call her “The Boss Man” for her tendency to speak up. But behind the scenes Rader is equally vocal, and has earned the nickname “Dream Killer” for his tendency to think through the practicalities of an idea and work out if it’s actually achievable. “I’m probably the more logical one – we’ll come up with the idea, then I’ll be the one to say ‘We can do it like this, we can’t do this’, and so on,” he laughs. “But Pamela’s definitely more vocal on the shoot.”

Nevertheless, they say, everything they do is completely intertwined, and they can’t envisage splitting up their lives, let alone their ideas. “The work is really a collaboration – we can’t separate the ideas out into mine or Matt’s,” says Reed. “I’ve never even thought about not working together. It seems unimaginable at this point.”

Cia de Foto
Brazilian-based collective Cia de Foto is made up of eight people. There are three photographers, two post-producers, two reps and an intern photographer – but the collective signs all its work as Cia de Foto, and shares all the money it earns, “each according to their needs”.

Established in 2003 by Rafael Jacinto and Pio Figueiroa, they were soon joined by a third photographer, Joao Kehl, and a team of non-photographic staff, each of whom are seen as equally important to the end result. “Pio and I had been working on newspapers for seven years, and we were tired of the daily routine,” says Jacinto. “We were members of the same team, but we didn’t feel part of a team because we had no room for discussions or ideas. We decided to let it go and do our own thing, something that would let us develop our photography and find time and space to study and talk about it.

“We work closely together, literally sitting together much of the time, and everyone contributes comments and ideas,” he continues. “We like to use small cameras and fixed lenses so the editing and post-production are just as important as taking the pictures, and the other jobs that are also essential. We feel we can’t say that an idea or single image belongs to a single person, and often we can’t remember who came up with the original idea anyway.”

The collective undertakes both editorial and more commercially driven work, including assignments for Nike and Electrolux. Each time a commission comes in it’s simply assigned to the photographer, or photographers, who will be able to do it best. “Then either we or Carol Lopes [one of the post-producers] will do the picture edit,” says Jacinto. “It depends on the workflow and deadline. Having chosen the pictures, she then does the post-production. Vinicius Assencio, another post-producer, and Malu Teodoro, our intern photographer, always work on the jobs, and Flavia Padrao, our co-ordinator, oversees the whole process, particularly on commercial jobs."

Jacinto says that working as a team helps the collective solve problems, as they’re able to pool their resources and knowledge. But he also believes that talking ideas through before carrying them out makes for better work. “Of course we argue – it’s part of any democratic process,” he says. “But having different points of view is one of the strongest aspects of our approach. And once you’re very close to your colleagues, you understand what they’re going through.”

Working collectively also ensures that each photographer can work on more than one project as a time, and it’s perhaps testament to how well it works that none of the participants does anything outside Cia de Foto. “Our major project is Cia de Foto, and how to keep it going and make ourselves happy,” says Jacinto. “It’s permanent for as long as it lasts.”

Broomberg and Chanarin
London-based photographers Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin, both 39, have been collaborating for more than a decade. The pair’s professional partnership goes back to 2000 when they took control of Colors magazine, but they first met aged 19 while on holiday in the Cape. They have since published numerous books and had many solo shows, including Mr Mkhize’s Portrait, which was published by Trolley and exhibited at The Photographers’ Gallery. Their collaboration is so firm that they suggest doing this interview by email, answering as one. Arranging instead to interview them in person, a last-minute change means only Broomberg is available to talk in their studio in Spitalfields, east London. But there’s no doubt that he speaks for both of them.

In the studio there are three Panavision Anamorphic film lenses and the new Canon EOS 1D Mark IV, which comes with HD video capability, packed and ready to travel. Broomberg is going to Tipton in the West Midlands the following day to begin work on a project on the US military’s use of sound torture, a project the pair are working on with Massive Attack, the NGO Reprieve, Christchurch College, Cambridge, and ex-Guantanamo Bay detainee Ruhal Ahmed.

“[Ahmed] is taking part [in the film] playing a fictional role, coming up with a script,” explains Broomberg. “And with Christchurch College, we’re setting up scientific experiments to measure the psychological and physiological effects of sound on the human body. Ruhal is going to be the knowing subject – he has agreed to collaborate on it and endure the tests.”

It’s an insight into their working methods. His partner, Chanarin, isn’t back from New York until the following week. “It’s interesting that I say ‘we’,” muses Broomberg. “Olly and I both say ‘we’ all the time, regardless of who actually conceived the idea or image, the project, or the theoretical backbone to it. I think about it in cinematic terms, a longer moment that stretches much further [than the so-called decisive moment]. All these different relationships form around that moment; mine and Olly’s form is just one of them. All the discussions that lead up to the moment [of pressing the shutter] inform the outcome.”

In fact, Broomberg and Chanarin do most of their shoots separately, but they reject  “the mythology of the photographer, author or artist as a lone predator”, criticising it as macho. “You’ve got to distance yourself from all that stuff,” says Broomberg. “You get commissions, even now, which are, ‘Go in and document the village’, and it’s just like, ‘Are we in the 19th century?’ What about the village documenting the village? Who’s got the authority? Who gives you the authority?”

There are disadvantages to collaborating, of course. They get paid a single person’s fee and they do sometimes argue. But, at best, it’s a creative partnership, mutually supportive and inspiring. “It can be tough – you’re vulnerable when you’re throwing ideas out in their very crude, raw form, and it’s very hard to do it with someone you know so well. But we push each other’s moral position.”


Ruido Photo
Ruido Photo (meaning “noise”) is a collective based in Barcelona, a city famous for its anti-establishment views. Six students from the Institut d’Estudis Fotogràfics de Catalunya, a technical photography school in Barcelona, decided to group together as photojournalists after graduation. Now Ruido consists of 11 core members, mostly from Spain and Argentina, eight of whom are photographers, plus there’s a project manager, designer and a journalist. A further six photographers collaborate with Ruido on a casual basis, and everyone keeps in touch regularly online, and they all get together in person every six months.

“It’s a complete mix of work and friendship,” says Edu Ponces, one of the core members, speaking from the house in Barcelona where five of the collective live and work. “We’re almost like siblings, but the downside is you go out with your workmates,” he laughs. As well as sharing an office space, the group pool resources, sharing things like large lenses, projectors and computers.
All this took extra work in the beginning, taking all of them away from their photography to put time in to the administration. “Now we have people who work in publicity, awareness raising and getting our message across.”

The major benefit of being in a collective is the autonomy it gives them. Ponces says that Ruidu’s size makes it possible to approach NGOs and financial institutions for commissions and funding, which in turn means the collective can be picky about its editorial clients. “I don’t have an editorial censor – nobody ever calls me to say, ‘I don’t like this’ or ‘I’m not going to publish this’ or ‘This is an ugly image’. The original money to do a story always comes from a financial firm or an international co-operative agency. For example, six of us worked on a project about central American immigration, and it resulted in a book of photographs, a book of articles and a documentary film. It had a budget of $300,000 over the one-and-a-half years. It’s had a huge impact and a lot of media coverage in Mexico and the United States.”

Editorial clients include the New York Times, which published the immigration story, and locally relevant titles such as Latin newspapers in Los Angeles and investigative journals in Mexico. “What characterises Ruido is this thinking approach to stories we report, away from the demands of the mass media,” says Ponces. “We deal with difficult social issues, so we’ve worked out a system to finance our stories not through the media.”
The members have even set up their own photography school. “It runs all year in Barcelona, and it’s a very important source of income for us,” says Ponces. “Last year I spent six months teaching, and six months working away in El Salvador as photojournalist.”

But despite all the benefits there are inevitably disagreements too. “We argue about whether Ruido has to stay to Barcelona, or whether committing to Ruido means you can’t do certain stories,” says Ponces. “For example, if one day we don’t have the money to maintain our structure, we’ll be obliged to do things that aren’t to do with Ruido. That’s a bone of contention.”

Diver & Aguilar Photographic
Mike Diver and Pedro Aguilar met five years ago, after Aguilar saw a feature on Diver’s photography in BJP and contacted him. A retoucher with a fine-art background, Aguilar originally got in touch to see if Diver needed help with post-production, but the pair swiftly realised they could work more closely together. They set up formally as a partnership a year later.

“I guess at the beginning when we were working together the division between the photography and the retouching was clear, but as we’ve grown together it’s disappeared,” says Aguilar. “It’s a more organic relationship now.”

“We have an almost subliminal understanding now,” says Diver. “And because we have that trust in each other’s work, it allows us to multitask. Pedro may be working on one project, while I’m pitching for something else. We know what we like, what we want, and the direction we’re going in with the work.”
Diver was a successful photographer in his own right before he joined forces with Aguilar but, he says, handing over some of the control hasn’t been hard at all. “Being self-employed can be very lonely,” he says. “With someone else on board there are more ideas flowing around. I think that I’m achieving more of what I want to do by having a partner. Before, I had all these frustrations because there were things I wanted to say but couldn’t.”

Together the pair have created a signature style, which they’ve applied to both still life and portraits, creating award-winning work for clients such as FC Barcelona, Coca Cola and Graff. Their images have very high production values, perhaps impossible for any photographer to create alone, but Aguilar argues that no photographer ever works entirely alone anyway. “People tend to think of photography as the act of pushing the button, but of course there’s much more to it than that,” he says. “People are getting away from the 19th century idea of the artist alone in the world, away from everything else, and becoming more open to other people and what they can offer.”

Diver agrees, adding that he has always worked with other people, it’s just that he previously worked with assistants, who inevitably moved on after a year or two. “We just chose to take the relationship in-house but, of course, we still collaborate with other people,” he says. “For example, we’ve just been working on a CGI project with London-based Saddington Baynes.”

The pair work together most of the time and say they both take charge at one point or another. They shoot digitally on Hasselblads and Canons, with a post-production suite of two identical workstations set up next door. The computers are linked, so they can work on the same thing at the same time, but they don’t always feel the need. “We’re not always working on exactly the same task but creative decisions are always being made between the two of us,” says Aguilar.

They split any earnings equally and have set themselves up “as a proper limited company” but, even so, see their work as a passion not of job. “It’s a labour of love,” says Diver. “It has to be – otherwise you’re in the wrong job.”