Dispute over sponsorship money awarded to photographer
The struggle of Cape Town's Month of Photography to pay its exhibition and organizing expenses spilled over into the public arena this week.
It started with a question raised in a photographers' listserve about the rumour that the Month of Photography was suing young photographer Mikhael Subotzky for R50 000. This elicited a response from MoP director Geoffrey Grundlingh that MoP was trying to recover 40% of an amount of R48 000 awarded to Mikhael Subotzky by the Goethe Institute in Johannesburg, and according to Grundlingh, 'inexplicably' paid directly to Subotzky.
This sponsorshjp was given by the Institute to support Subotzky's workshops with prisoners at Pollsmoor Prison and his one day exhibition 'Vier Hoeke' in the prison on Freedom Day, April 27. The Institute decided to award this sponsorship after a student volunteer for MoP, who has since left the organization, flew up to Johannesburg and made a presentation of the work of a number of photographers to the Goethe Institute. The Institute decided to sponsor only Subotzky's exhibition project.
Quoted in the Cape Times of June 28 in an article headed Photographic feeding frenzy over student's sponsorship , Nikolai Petersen, head of the Goethe's Institute's Programmes Department, said 'Last year we told them (the Month of Photography) that we would sponsor the artist directly because we were very impressed with his work. We told them the money was for him, not for their organization. It was one of the conditions of our sponsorship.'
Apparently when the volunteer had arrived back from Johannesburg with the news of the sponsorship, Subotzky was told by MoP that in order to receive the money he would have to give 40% to MoP to help with exhibition expenses incurred by other photographers, and he verbally agreed to this. Later he found out that this was not in fact a condition imposed by the Institute, and that 40% is a much higher percentage (10% is standard) than normal for an agent obtaining a sponsorship on behalf of a third party.
Subotzky has subsequently offered R10 000, or 20% in order to resolve the matter and put the dispute behind him without wasting more time and money on litigation.
