Fancy-schmancy award-winning photojournalist James Nachtwey put up a demanding ad for an unpaid lackey (pretty much specifying rich kids only). Instead of lapping it up like starved dogs, New York's photographic community lashed out.

Here's the ad - which asks for some (apparently) pretty high-end skills and then adds:

The internship is unpaid, so please be financially prepared to participate in this program.

This very much upset some of the photographers of New York. They laid down their cameras, picked up their computers and unleashed torrents of abuse at Nachtwey and co. here. Someone called Dave summed up the sentiments:

Letting his office attempt to hire skilled post prod technicians for free on the basis of his rep is shabby.

Someone called Jim pulled out all the stops and hit Wikipedia:

A little compensation would be nice for such a set of required skills. I doubt it would put a dent in Nachtwey's bank roll.

From Wikipedia: "In 2006, Nachtwey was awarded the 12th Annual Heinz Award in Arts and Humanities from the Heinz Family Foundation for his body of work[3], an honor that includes a monetary prize of US $250,000. Nachtwey is one of three winners of the 2007 TED Prize. Each recipient was granted $100,000 and one "world-changing wish" to be revealed at the 2007 TED conference, in Monterey, California."

There are also many people defending Nachtwey. Who, to be fair, is not doing anything that other big photographers do not. The endless debate over slave labor in the media continues!

(Pic via)