Capturing Life's Moments: The Marcus Legacy and the International Photographic Council's Mission

Join us on a visual odyssey with Andy Marcus, the president of multigenerational NYC studio Fred Marcus Studio and president of the International Photographic Council (IPC). In a heartfelt recount of his family's history, Marcus unveils poignant chapters from his father's flight from Germany to the establishment of a legendary photography business serving high-profile clients. The Fred Marcus legacy, steeped in rich tradition and continued by Andy's son, Brian, exemplifies the art of capturing life's grandest moments. 

Marcus also serves as the president of the IPC, with the mission of fostering unity and recognition in the photographic community. Hear about the IPC's dedication to nurturing the future of photography through selective scholarships, and how enthusiasts can become part of this vibrant community. With a spotlight on the upcoming IPC luncheon, Marcus highlights the unique opportunity for networking and engagement—essential for those with a passion for the photography industry. 

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Transcript

Erin Manning: 0:02

Welcome to the Dead Pixels Society podcast, the photo imaging industry's leading news source. Here's your host Gary Pageau, The Dead Pixels Society podcast is brought to you by Mediaclip, Advertek Printing and Independent Photo Imagers.

Gary Pageau: 0:18

Hello again and welcome to the Dead Pixels Society podcast. I'm your host, Gary Pageau, and today we're joined by Andy Marcus of Fred Marcus Photography and president of the International Photographic Council. Hi, Andy, how are you today? I'm good, Gary. How are you Great? So before we get into talking about IPC and its activities and functions, I'd like to first ask you more about your history in the industry, right, Because it goes back many, many decades. So I want to kind of frame it in that how you got started in the business.

Andy Marcus: 0:55

That's an interesting story. Well, my dad started the business in 1941. It was an interesting story. He actually came from Germany right before the war got dead and was actually in a concentration camp for about six months. One of his employees actually his dad's employees they were in a garment business, ski wear business and got him out and he had 24 hours to leave the country and those 24 hours he packed up what he could he was an amateur photographer to get a Leica that he took with him and went to Cuba Cuba he had to make a living. He was only supposed to be there for a couple of days. It turned out that he was there for two years and he had to make a living. So he took his camera and went out to the beach and there were a lot of other immigrants on the beach the beaches of Cuba and waiting to come to the United States, and he took pictures of them. At night he'd go back to his small apartment and in his bathroom he would develop the pictures in his bathtub it was, I mean, tell me this whole story. In the next day. He'd print them up and bring them back to the beach and sell them.

Andy Marcus: 2:13

To make a long story short. He was there two years, as I said, came to the United States and found that a lot of the people he had photographed in Cuba were coming to the United States and settling in New York City. So he decided to go there. He located in an area that they were living on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. They found him, they called him for more photographs of their families. They loved his work and then they had events in their lives weddings, parties, whatever it may be and he was the one they called. It was a small business. It was in a basement of a small apartment building and my dad always hated when I said it was the basement he said no, it's the lower lobby. It was, I would say, raise the reception. But he was there, like I said, from 1941 to really like three or four years ago when we moved. I'll get into that.

Andy Marcus: 3:12

I was with him since 1971 when I graduated from college in New York. I had always helped him since I was 13 years old and he was. I was always his assistant and little by little, by the time I was 17, I guess, I was photographing weddings and parties and little by little our business seemed to grow. It started off at a pretty low level but it grew and grew and his reputation as a portrait photographer really a master of lighting and working with children, an amazing guy and I just watched, listened and learned and I started doing it and we began to grow. We have, I can tell you, a million stories about our business, but it's we wound up. You know. Presently we're really all over the world. We're doing enormous weddings, portrait sittings.

Andy Marcus: 4:14

I was working with, actually with Donald Trump for about I was working with actually with Donald Trump for about, oh God, 15 years or so, photographed one of his weddings, photographed his daughter's wedding, of Ivanka Trump, Jared's wedding. We photographed LeBron James's way. I mean, I can go on and on. So there's a whole slew of these and it became a name got out there. We were always very honest, very private. We never shared anything, although we were offered many times to get you know. These magazines wanted photographs, gave us blank checks, never happened and that got around and people respect that. They. You showed discretion, exactly.

Andy Marcus: 4:55

And now today my son is in the business and he's been in the business probably about 15 years. He started out wanting to be in the movie business, went to California for three years. I told him I'm not paying for this. You got to work in. You know friends in California. I said you work for them and you make some money. And he did every few months I'd call how you're doing and I called my friend and he's oh, he's, terrific. He's now. Now he's photographing weddings and, oh my god, the brides want him to come and, you know, meet with them. It turned out that he was making this guy a lot of money. So I called him. I said do you really love California? Why don't you come back and work for us? So he said you know, I don't love California so much I'm going to come back. And he came back and he's been in the business doing amazingly well. He has a like a stellar reputation here in New York, very, very talented. And we put together a wonderful team of photographers. You know, busy all the time.

Gary Pageau: 5:53

Well, that sounds great, but so I love the family business. And you go, what is your son's name? Brian, brian, okay, brian, great. But we're here mostly to talk about IPC. For those who aren't familiar with IPC, can you share some of the history of their organization, because it's been around a long time and it's got kind of a very interesting history.

Andy Marcus: 6:15

Yeah, ipc began 50 years ago and it was started by a wonderful man, james Chung, who started this as a way for corporations companies to get together and share their knowledge, honor photographers for their work, and this has been going. I've been involved for about, I'd say, 10 or 12 years myself. Right, jimmy was an amazing man.

Gary Pageau: 6:44

Yes, Everyone loved Jimmy Chung. He was a great man.

Andy Marcus: 6:49

Great man and he was a lot of fun to work with. Unfortunately, he passed away about a year ago along with what was going on with the pandemic and along with the fact that the United Nations, where we held all of our luncheons, was under a huge, their dining room was under a huge reconstruction, haven't been active for about three to four years, could even be a little longer than that.

Andy Marcus: 7:45

I'm working with a fabulous executive board. You know Fred Lerner, Kathy Jello, Kathy McGrane, who's amazing with helping us with all our web stuff and social media. It's been an interesting ride.

Gary Pageau: 8:02

So we had a lunch in this past October First before we get into that, can you talk a little bit about the mission of IPC? Oh as to, you know, the reason why IPC exists isn't just to have luncheons.

Andy Marcus: 8:14

No, no, no, Believe me, it's not that the food isn't that good. Yes, okay. So our mission is a mission you know statement, so to speak. Is peace through photography the universal language right, which I kind of love because it, you know, photographs to me are you know. You know, obviously everybody has a different take on a particular photograph, but it does capture moments in time and I think it's a wonderful you know motto for our group. As a group, what we do, we try to raise money for scholarships for worthy students, and that's part of what we do we're getting into now. We want to do exhibitions of photographers, work that has some sort of some sort of a universal appeal as far as peace in our world and showing conservation in our world, things like that. And along with that we have brought in many corporations. All the major corporations have come and find that this is a wonderful thing that we get some sponsors and put this together and create this environment where people can thrive.

Gary Pageau: 9:29

And it is a nonprofit, it is a, you know? Oh yeah, it's a nonprofit.

Andy Marcus: 9:33

None of us work for any money. It's kind of like my business. It didn't start out that way, my business.

Gary Pageau: 9:38

but so I mean, that's an aspect to it is that I think it would be helpful for people to know that this is not a for-profit enterprise, it's a nonprofit. So that's, you know, important, I think, for people to know if they want to get involved, it is going to benefit the industry and benefit students and hopefully make the world a little more peaceful. I think that's probably the way we want to look at it.

Andy Marcus: 10:01

We're looking at honoring people and then, furthermore, all right, the other thing that we do, once you hear, we get recommendations from the different companies. So, in other words, we go to a camera company Sony, canon, whatever and say listen, here's our mission, I want you to recommend two or three photographers and nominate them, and we want to give them an achievement award, photograph achievement award. That's been going on for the last probably 15 years, maybe more. You know, we're going from APA to ASMP, to PPA, to WPPI, to White House press photographers. It's really and all of these organizations now are very into this and it's become a wonderful thing. So we get these nominations, we select as a group, one of the people and they get this award. They will get an award at the ceremony During the luncheon.

Andy Marcus: 11:01

Furthermore, we also have we designated keynote speaker. This past October we had Neil Manowitz, who is the president of Sony Electronics. A wonderful man gave a wonderful keynote and I think everybody was very impressed by his words. We also had we have the UN involved, because this is held at the UN. We made a effort and strong effort I made to get the secretary general of the United Nations Global projects to come and speak to us and she was amazing, did an amazing job speak. People were so impressed and touched by her words.

Gary Pageau: 11:47

And so who was this person? Who is the UN representative?

Andy Marcus: 11:51

The woman we had was the Undersecretary General of the United Nations, Melissa Fleming, and she's the Undersecretary General of Global Communications Great Thank you to our luncheon. Spoke beautifully. I think everybody was touched by her words and I'm going to try very, very hard to get her back again for this coming luncheon that we're having. So it's having all these things, having these people come looking at their work and trying to get a different take on this. I don't want to get the same old, same old photographers. I don't want to get the president of this organization, of that organization which, when Jimmy was there, it was kind of easy for the organizations to just say, oh, our president will be the one we're nominating. I don't want that. I want real-deal get photographers.

Andy Marcus: 12:46

We started a new category of an environmental award and we're giving it to Benjamin Ban Wang and he is a young man who does environmental photography. What he does is take plastics and take junk out of the oceans and create sculptures and then photographs them. He was just at the Economic Conference in Davos. I saw images of his being projected all over the country. He does amazing things and has a zillion followers. I mean literally. I think he has something like 100 million followers or something. It's a crazy, crazy number and so he's going to be there and he used to live in California, moved to New York and now has a place in New York. So he's going to be there for the luncheon and this year also honoring as the major honorary lifetime achievement award to Douglas Kirkland, who a lot of people know as an amazing portrait photographer or a Hollywood photographer. He's kind of a legend and his wife, fran Swaz, will be doing the keynote for us.

Gary Pageau: 14:00

Yeah, he passed in 2022, I think, and he was known for a lot of the really classic kind of celebrity portraits from the Golden Age and then beyond.

Andy Marcus: 14:15

Every day I learned more and he was one of the biggest celebrity photographers, very involved Marilyn Monroe and Bridget Bardot. I mean he had a good life.

Gary Pageau: 14:28

And so obviously it's a posthumous award, and so his wife is going to be the keynote speaker. His widow, I should say, is going to be the keynote speaker. Well, any of his work be on display.

Andy Marcus: 14:38

Yes, we're going to have his work on display. We're going to have his work. You'll start to see this now on our website, ipcphotoorg. We are going to be even having a little auction of some of his photographs and some of his books that he has out of his several books out. So we're going to do that as a way to also raise some money for the organization.

Gary Pageau: 15:03

Great and so, like you said, it's scholarships, right, I mean, that's part of what. You haven't really started with the exhibitions and things yet, but you are starting with scholarships. You provided already a couple of scholarships last year. Even though it was your first year back, you were able to provide for the scholarship. Can you talk a little bit about what the qualifications are for the James L Chung Memorial Scholarship?

Andy Marcus: 15:25

Okay. So what we want is to approach photography schools, and this past luncheon we used a school of visual arts and we asked them if they would provide us with names of a couple of people that they thought were worthy of getting scholarship. We vet their work, invite them to the luncheon. We present them with a scholarship. Actually, the scholarship goes to the school and the school uses it to pay their tuition. I don't want them to go out and take their family.

Gary Pageau: 16:02

Exactly, it's a scholarship, not a party fund.

Andy Marcus: 16:06

Exactly so. We gave it to the school. The school disperses it for their tuition and whatever. So, yeah, we started with them. We're going to wind up going to other schools as well and as we grow we can give out even more scholarships. Exhibitions are a little more difficult because we like to have them at the UN, but the UN has amazingly difficult compliance issues that it can take a year, year and a half before you get permission to do anything.

Gary Pageau: 16:38

Plus, it's not easy even just to walk in, I mean just to go into the UN. There's a security check point and there's 100%. It's not like going to the mall where you walk through.

Andy Marcus: 16:49

It's not like going to the Museum of Natural History. You're just, you know where you walk in. This is now. There is security, there's such. But we've had exhibitions in the past and it's nice because we invite the secretary general in. You know, we had a anniversary party I think it was the 40th anniversary and they, you know, we brought a big cake and there was a whole ceremony in the lobby. It was very nice and the exhibition was up for quite a few months. So, and we provide all of that, so we make the prints, and some of our sponsors, whether Epson or Gula Packard, would make the prints and they could.

Andy Marcus: 17:28

You know, but it pulled out.

Gary Pageau: 17:31

So there's no limit then on the number of scholarships you can provide, right? I mean, right now you're providing two, but it could be more.

Andy Marcus: 17:41

Yes, of course, and it's only you know, monetarily, what we can, you know, afford to do. You know, I don't feel. You know we're giving out a dozen. I want it to be special, so we would give out a few. You know that would be a goal, but we'll, you know, we'll see how that, you know, works out as we go along.

Gary Pageau: 17:57

So if someone wanted to contribute to IPC to support it, what are the mechanisms for that? Can they donate to the scholarships directly? Do they become an IPC member? Do they sponsor an event? How does that?

Andy Marcus: 18:12

all work. Basically, if you want to become a member, there is no cost at this time. You can just join by going to the website, signing in and you would receive all the notices, et cetera, of any events and what we're doing. So that's the easy part, and I invite you know anybody who would like to join and find out more about us to go to our website and sign up. You can also see on the website some of the previous winners that have received awards. You know it's a good place to get an overview of what's going on with us.

Gary Pageau: 18:48

And that website is ipcphotoorg Correct.

Andy Marcus: 18:53

Yeah, when you go onto the website you'll see first of all a page where you can sign up to come to our luncheon. That's the first part. We also are always looking for sponsors, so a lot of the organizations do like to give us a sponsorship, not asking for, you know, thousands and thousands of dollars, but you know, every little bit counts and again, the more sponsors, sponsorships that we have, the more I can do as far as we can do, as far as providing scholarships to people. That's what we are. The luncheon, unfortunately, you know, is a big cost to us. So I mean, you can buy tickets for the luncheon, but we try to at least recoup the luncheon cost and then anything after that would go to now.

Gary Pageau: 19:43

And once again, for I don't think we've actually mentioned the exact date and the time for the luncheon, so can you share that this?

Andy Marcus: 19:51

is very important. If you want to come, luncheon is going to be on May 15th, coming May 15th of 24. It is held, actually, which is Really. You know, I'm always impressed going to. It's held at the delegates dining at the United Nations and last year, which was our first year back after 4 years, I think my executive board weren't expecting more than 50 or 60 people and over 150 people, right it's. It really is a wonderful time.

Andy Marcus: 20:25

What we do at the luncheon actually is we have a hour before we have a little cocktail meet and greet thing, which turned out to be what we heard the most about after the event that this was the best thing that we could do. And all these companies, all their representatives, everybody kind of mingled and talked and had the best time, didn't even want it to end. So this year we're going to try to make it a little bit longer. Give people what they want, you know. So I want, I want to have that, because that's really what it's all about, putting it, you know as great as zoom is, there's nothing like a face to face meet 100% and everybody totally enjoyed it.

Andy Marcus: 21:04

It was, it was fun, it was a great luncheon and a lot of good feedback.

Gary Pageau: 21:08

Now, it's scheduled for 1130 to 3pm, so you'd recommend getting there on time to get advantage of the networking because it does start at 30.

Andy Marcus: 21:22

And you know, keep in mind the the security that you have to go through. So I tell people you know you should get there. Probably you know quarter to 11 or you know 11 o'clock. Get through the security, get up to the dining room and have some fun meeting everybody in the industry that you only hear about and never meet.

Gary Pageau: 21:40

You know. So, yeah, I've had the honor of going to IPC meetings back in the day and it is a process to get into the US.

Andy Marcus: 21:49

It's not a bad one.

Gary Pageau: 21:51

It's like going to an airport. It's not bad.

Andy Marcus: 21:52

Exactly, that's exactly what it is Good, except you don't have to take your shoes off.

Gary Pageau: 21:58

Well, there you go. It's a benefit, awesome. This is a great talking to you today about IPC and, of course, your business, fred Marcus photography. Again, where can people go for more information to participate in IPC or just go get more information? Where is the best place to go?

Andy Marcus: 22:15

I would say, go to our website IPCphotoorg. Anybody can also write. You can write to me, andy Marcus, at IPCphotoorg, and happy to answer any questions or give you any more information that you would like you know. Hope to see everybody there.

Gary Pageau: 22:38

Yes, hope to see you in May in New York City.

Andy Marcus: 22:41

That would be wonderful. Gary, thank you so much for the time. Thank you so much. Take care. Bye, bye now.