The increasingly desperate Esquire, already tedious for its endless cheesecake photography and tutorials on how to dress like Dennis Quaid in Far from Heaven, now proposes you hand over your work for free. “Man at his best”?
Esquire is looking for a few good celebrity photos. But not the kind of slick images we normally publish. No, we’re looking for moments you’ve captured with your own camera (cell phone, digital, or otherwise) within the past year…. If we select your photos, you will be credited.
But not, curiously enough, paid.
Are we done yet, though?
All submissions become the property of Esquire and will not be returned.
It’s not like I’m stupid or something: You can have my photographs when you prise them from my cold, dead hands, or when you negotiate a paid limited-use license that respects my authorial copyright, whichever comes first.
Esquire is, by its publisher’s admission, profitable:
After years of red ink, with one executive at the company saying that the magazine lost over $10 million a year a decade ago, Esquire finally eked out a low-six-figure profit last year, according to executives at Hearst Magazines, of which Esquire is part.
No doubt Bruce Mau acolytes will sign right up, since, to a starfucker, Esquire’s pitch sounds like a golden opportunity. But as I like to put it, “Let somebody else fuck the star.”