I was 26. I had shot this fashion story that would lead me to instant (non monetary) success. I had arranged the whole thing. I had chosen the clothes, chosen the model, chosen the makeup and the idea. A magazine claimed it its own, even wanting to change the entire picture set which I didn't give in to. I was firm. It had to be my way or no way at all. They understood and later took revenge, because in the course of the following months and years they would seize my photography skills to use them as they pleased. There was a "you're gonna be published in a printed magazine" blackmail. No commission, not even a glass of water offered to me during those shootings. If I needed transportation, it was on me. If I got hungry, it was up to me as well. Little did I know that upon starting to work for other magazines, they were all the same. The person wasn't the value here, not even the photographer. Only the final picture.
Not entirely done with the overwhelming success of the previous photoshoot, a month later I started to coordinate a brand new photoshoot with this makeup artist / hair stylsit pair, a marriage actually. We decided to work on this project for the mere love of art. We had chosen the best of the best, one of the best models, the best styling... and one of the best fashion designers in the city. Although said fashion designer was a friend of mine, I was surprised when he agreed to lend me some of his collections for the photoshoots, since he never lent me any piece unless the photoshoot was for him and his brand, a behavior pattern that lasted to the last moment. I was happy, our project was taking shape and I would finally shoot his clothes for a very personal project, or so I thought. He wanted to be present in the photoshoot. I didn't realize about this until the pictures were published, but the whole photoshoot eventually turned from our art project to a whole campaign for him. The change was so subtle and slow, that we never noticed it. Of course, this was the first of his many antics he passively did to me. Here I will enlist some of them that happened throughout the years:
- In our very last photoshoot I contacted not a model, but a beauty queen who is a friend of mine to model for the pictures. Halfway through the photoshoot he claimed she was not as thin as he wanted, and we cancelled the whole thing. Practically he made me kick her out of there. She scolded me later that day.
- A lady owed him money while he owed me the exact same amount because of some graphic design job I did for him. Since such lady was also a friend of mine, he told me to request the money from her instead. This lady never paid me.
- We had a photoshoot with a male model I had a huge crush on. I did (wrongly) post a picture ahead of time which detonated a bit of this designer's wrath, forcing me to delete it right away. After this incident, such model didn't talk to me for quite a while.
This designer always acted as my friend though.
Back to the photoshoot which began as a personal art project and ended up being for him, I should give a lot of credit to that one though. Credit because the impact was even stronger than the previous one. My career flew to the stars. There wasn't a single model, brand, fashion designer and makeup artist who didn't want to work with me. I got stalked, I got harrased by people who wanted to exploit my talent. Then, some people from the past who had cut me of at home moment came to the surface. They would start to like my posts, they would start to text me to catch up, followed by a coffee invitation. Naive me would say: "Of course! Are you free next Saturday afternoon???" and that was it, no response. "No my man, actually I have no intentions of spending some time with you, I just wanna say that I have a famous friend" was that invaded my mind some time after those incidents. When my career began to face its decay, I did no longer hear from them.
I played the strong guy towards these incidents. After all, I was too busy living the 'rockstar' life. Being published in magazines (now not only my work, my some magazines would dedicate articles towards my person), travelling overseas to attend personal and work events, being called to represent this famous beauty pageant through my lens, conference lectures, exhibitions. It all made sense to me one day I landed in some mexican city and while claiming baggage, these two guys approach me (which I had seen in the flight looking at me and then gossiping one another) and say: "Are you Diego Fraustro??? OMG, I love your work!!!". That's when I understood the magnitude of what I was doing.
I was so confused but I let myself go. All these events in my life forced me to quit an office job which allowed me to live comfortably, while I was doing my 'artsy' photoshoots on the side with no economical reward, just recognition. It took about a year to completely rely on photography to make a living, which led me to focus on commercial work, not leaving me time or even energy to make personal 'artsy' work. Now, I had nothing to show in my social media that I was proud of, nothing to create and potentially be published in magazines and it had its consequences. The travelling was gone, the conferences were gone, the exhibitions were gone and the fans fulfilled their eyes in other photographer's work, new photographers actually.
However, in October 2018 I was requested to make three final pictures for a new collective exhibition under one certain theme: Icons. I thought: "What is Iconic to me?" and I relied on my digital painting days, a field I could never be as good as I wanted. And I had this painter whose work was pretty iconic to me at that time, but I will only mention her initials: LB. There, all I had to do was a tribute to her since it had been more than a decade that she vanished from the digital art communities due to some personal issues, but I also needed her permission in order to do so. I asked the only lady that I knew was friends with her (a fellow digital artist also) and someone who maybe was still in touch with her. "Hi! Sorry to bother you... I was wondering if you would ask for her permission to do this tribute to her on my behalf...". "No, and I'm tired of people like you looking forward to use me only to get close to her". I apologized and never talked to her again. All I wanted was some permission, not to get in touch with such artist. I ended up doing something else instead.
By 2019 my photography career was pretty much dead. I had worked with some elites, with some celebrities in the past which made me pretty confident to rise up my fees. People would later complain I was being so expensive, comparing me with the emerging photographers who cheapen down their work. That year I basically made my living as a driver on these new digital platforms. The only things left were my (again) 'rockstar' memories and the beauty pageant.
The breaking point came recently, in the middle of 2020. One of my many Instagram followers misunderstood a story I had posted and directly sent it to my pageant director. I followed that version, maybe because I wanted to be fired but I even plead guilty and defended myself. A lot of people would watch my stories but almost no one would ever participate in the interactive ones. And then this happened, in less than an hour after I posted that story. My pageant director texted me saying she was dissapointed of me. That's when I had enough, I was surrounded and followed by such negative, toxic vibes and decided to shut down that Instagram account. Well, not shut down actually since it holds many years of portfolio, but I logged out entirely of it. Now I use another one, in which I follow people I care about only, not the typical "Instagram Models", "Influencers" and such people I was forced to follow as a fashion photographer. With less than 100 followers on this new one, I'm much much happier.
This breaking point also made me realize and think about all these years of playing strong and and letting myself go within a lot of bad experiences. The fashion cocktails surrounding me with such pretentious fake people, the modelling agency that broke one of my strobe light bulbs and never took responsability of it, the endless amount of people who always wanted to make decisions on my career, the people who wanted to decide my fees, the charity institution that I made a 3 non stop day long photoshoot for to raise funds for them and later on gave me their back when I asked them for a letter because I needed it for an art contest, the VIP dinner party I was invited to only to be seated alone in a small table excluded from the main table, the famous singer whose staff broke one of my light tripods, the popular life coach that stopped talking to me but never let me post his pictures, amonth others.
I'm not intending to play martyr here, but I hope my experience will help someone out there. I don't regret being a photographer though. I went back to digital art and started applying all my photography knowledge into it, finally achieving the results that make me happy. There's a lot much more I have to give, including this blog entry. Now I wonder, what's gonna happen with this blog?
