Brooklyn Beckham, at a whole 17 years old, has shot Burberry's latest campaign. This is his second campaign for Burberry. He did his first when he was 16. It was his first professional shoot. And it was for Burberry. Did we mention he was 16? And it was for Burberry?
Now, the teenager's work for the Burberry Brit fragrance has been revealed and it stars a whole host of newcomers including Ben Rees, Lewis Helim, Todd Dorigo, Eliza Thomas, Liv Mason Pearson, Maddie Demaine, Carvell Conduah and Harry Pourdjis.
For all we know about photgraphy (Instagram counts right?), Brooklyn Beckham could be one of the greatest undiscovered (now-discovered) talents of our time. He could be on track to rank amongst the Cecil Beatons, the Helmut Newtons and the Annie Leibovitzes of the future. His pieces could one day be shown to budding photographers at school as examples of the most progressive artwork of all time. But, for now, other photographers are royally pissed off.
Veteran photgrapher Chris Floyd (The New Yorker, Harpers Bazaar, GQ, Esquire, The New York Times Magazine) told the Guardian back in January that hiring Brooklyn was 'sheer nepotism' which goes against the 'hard graft' that Brooklyn's parents David and Victoria represent. Jon Gorrigan, another photographer speculated that Brooklyn wouldn't be doing any of the larger work. 'He’s obviously not going to be doing the lighting, he’ll have no clue of the programmes, the cameras or Photoshop.' However he did say that he could understand why the brand had selected Brooklyn, 'It infuriates me because I learned my trade and other photographers learn their trade but he’s not learning his trade. I can understand why they’re doing it, getting the younger generation interested in Burberry. It definitely annoys me. Names sell, don’t they?'
Yet another photographer joked on Instagram, 'Art Director on set: "Okay Brooklyn, we've set up the shot, the settings on the camera, the lighting is perfect, the model is ready to go. Here's the camera, here's where you press the shutter. Just point it at the model, take the pictreu and we can al (sic) go home. But first, let's take a picture of you holding the camera. Because let's be honest nobody cares about the model."'
By and large, Burberry tend favour uber photographer Mario Testino for their campaign photography. The renowned photographer first shot a major campaign for the fashion house in 1998 which featured Stella Tennant (if you haven't ever seen it, it's beautiful). In 1998, Testino was 48 and had been a published photographer for 15 years.
However exceptional Brooklyn's photography skills may be (and again, for all we know, he's got the best photographic eye since Ansel Adams), the disparity in age, experience and skill level between him and Testino prove that he was clearly chosen for the job for reasons other than pure skill. A fact which, while savvy as a marketing concept, serves as a potentially dangerous lesson to Brooklyn's young fans.
There have been several studies over the past few years quanitfying how the rise of celebrity culture has impacted the percieved future prospects of children. In 2009, a survey comissioned by Sky found that the top career choices for pre-teens were 'footballer', 'popstar' and 'actor' as compared to children of 1984 who chose more practical careers such as 'teacher', 'banker' and 'medicine'. In 2013 however, when children were asked what they wanted to be when they grew up in another survey, those career options had diminshed to simply 'rich' (the number one choice) and 'famous' (closely following at number two).
In a piece over the weekend written for the Observer about the price of instant fame, childrens' presenter Anna Williamson stated she'd often been 'excitedly told by a little person: “I want to be famous!” When I ask what they want to be famous for, I’m met with a blank stare, a nonchalant shrug, then a variation of: “I dunno, it looks cool, and you don’t have to do much to get attention and money.”' And, with examples like the Kardashians and other famous offspring making their cash and upping their Instagram followers by straddling a huge number of careers from 'model' to 'make-up artist', 'actor' to 'popstar', is it any wonder that careers which, to be done well, need a honed skill behind them are being mis-interpreted as a means to becoming 'famous'?
Then again, there's probably plenty to be said in teaching kids to craft their personal brand (aka their personal 'fame') in 2016. Sure, the chances that they'll get to Brooklyn's levels of followers and be asked to be a photographer for Burberry or that they'll become Kardashian-famous are few and far between (thank God), but there's plenty of bloggers, writers, comedians and photographers who have used their carefully crafted social personas to further their careers too.
If the overriding focus for our generation and the ones below becomes more on growing an audience to recieve our work than the actual work* itself* then for sure, the quality of output will suffer but, perhaps this is just one of those things; like black cabs being usurped by Uber, that we need to accept. While there *is *still place people to learn a trade, unless our personal brands are up there, there's next to no point putting in the effort in the first place.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.