The Myth of the Rich Gang Member
In 2005 Steven Levitt, a University of Chicago economist, and Stephen J. Dubner, a New York Times journalist, published Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. The book challenges common knowledge causes behind everyday occurrences using mathematics and economic theory.
One such chapter sheds light on the drug dealers and gang members during the crack-cocaine outbreak of the 1990’s. The general assumption of the time was that all of these miscreants were making so much money trafficking drugs that they had no reason to pursue legal employment, especially when the other options available in the inner city tended to be minimum wage jobs. Americans had visions of gang members sporting $500 tennis shoes rolling through dilapidated urban areas in BMWs, a myth supported and reinforced by pop culture.
However, Levitt and Dubner (using the hands-on work of Harvard sociologist Sudhir A. Venkatesh) found that the vast majority of gang members were by no means rich. In fact, they made far less money than they would have made at a minimum wage job. Why would anyone not only choose to pursue in this lifestyle, but clamor to participate, if the rewards were so meager? And what on earth does it have to do with wedding photography?
We’ve Got a Few Myths of Our Own
First, wedding photography has a few myths of its own, from both outside and inside the industry. From the outside, an archetypal photographer generally resembles a bad fashion photographer stereotype: self centered, brilliant but temperamental, and always terribly rich and stylish. In fact, there is some grumbling from outside the industry (whether it’s justified or not) that wedding photographers are overpaid, poor team players. We are not heart surgeons, as a baffled mid-western bride said on her blog, why should we make so much money?
