The PPA Council Meeting ‘of Doom’: Armed Guards, Blame Game, and No Leadership Changes

The Professional Photographers of America (PPA) is facing a leadership crisis. Based on a recap of the organization’s annual meeting yesterday, February 3, at Imaging USA, the situation has worsened, at least for some members.
Photographer Lynn Cartia, who has been keeping a close eye on the situation with PPA and its leadership on her substack, describes the annual meeting as having gone very poorly.
“I make it habit of believing the best until it is absolutely impossible to believe otherwise. I’ve always been that way,” Cartia writes in her latest post published today, February 4. “And then, simply put, I am done. And after the PPA Council Meeting, I am done. So done. I mean, stick a fork in me kind of done… A level of done-ness that is practically burned.”
It is worth briefly recapping the situation before understanding why Cartia is that done. At its core, the ongoing problems concern the controversial elections that determine the 13-person PPA Board of Directors. These directors oversee the PPA, which counts 35,000 photographers among its membership, making it the world’s largest organization of its kind. The PPA Council, a volunteer-based delegate body, elects people to the Board.
Last October, Allison English Watkins and Pete Rezac were elected as the next President and Vice President of the PPA’s Board of Directors. However, despite winning the election, the existing Board blocked them from taking their positions.
As for the dubious and often secretive reasons why this happened, Cartia’s blogs and PetaPixel‘s prior coverage cover them in detail.
The primary point is that councilors voted for leaders, as they do every two years, and the election results have not been honored. The current Board says they have the right to change leadership without the council’s approval.
Understandably, this has upset some members of the council, who held an in-person meeting at Imaging USA in Texas to discuss multiple motions, including potentially recalling the entire Board of Directors.
The February 3rd PPA Meeting: ‘The Council Meeting of Doom’
That brings the story up to the planned meeting at Imaging USA, which Cartia recaps in her lengthy new blog post.
After navigating through the sprawling Gaylord Texan resort where Imaging USA is held in Grapevine, Texas, and passing numerous armed guards, Cartia found a seat in the meeting room, learning at this time the armed guards are not related to the resort itself, but were on site at the request of the PPA.
Once formalities, including the Pledge of Allegiance and introductions, were out of the way, the meeting proper began.
The PPA’s longtime CEO, David Trust, offered a staff report, which Cartia characterizes as “a thorough tongue lashing.”
Cartia says Trust describes the PPA organization as so good that he wonders if people “have to invent things to complain about.” It is worth noting that Pete Rezac, who is still the Treasurer despite being elected as Vice President last October, said membership dues and Professional Photographer Magazine revenues are down.
Per Cartia’s report, Trust blamed PPA “insiders” for trying to “scare people away and damage PPA.”
“The CEO says we are at a crossroads; no drama, no overstatement. He says that today there is a ‘greater threat to this association than any time he’s been here. Greater than the financial crisis of 2008-2009; greater than just after Covid,’” Cartia writes.
Trust discussed people “spreading lies online,” while then claiming the PPA is “the cleanest association on the planet.”
Trust cautioned PPA council members to “think about the chilling effects of a recall.”
There are many more interesting things about Trust’s speech in Cartia’s comprehensive recap, but it is time to move on to the portion of the evening when council members could speak to the room.
Open Discussion: Fears of Retaliation, Concerns Over Recalling the Board
“There are lines of people waiting to speak. And, it starts out great. There is talk of being afraid of retaliation. There is talk of how the ‘board failed us’ and how ‘we can’t allow it to happen again.’ It is brought up that no motion had ever been necessary before to formalize a vote; how it’s become about personal preferences rather than bylaws. People talk of the pain PPA had caused its members and how the lack of transparency has caused a trust problem and how nobody likes what’s going on. One member worries that any voice of dissent will be retaliated against and calls for courage over fear,” Cartia writes.
Then those with differing viewpoints got to the mic, as is undeniably their right. The ability to have open discussion gets at the core of people, such as Cartia’s issues with the state of the PPA.
A past PPA president, not one of the 10 who submitted an open letter to the Board expressing displeasure and discontent with ongoing leadership concerns, said, “there is no reason to recall these fine people.” Another past president, again not part of the open letter, said people should accept the election and move on, referring not to the October one but to later secret ones.
A council member said that once the PPA’s leadership controversy reached social media, it was a big problem for the organization.
A current board member described people’s issues as “‘sore loser’ stuff.”
“I’m over here thinking, ‘Says the board member complicit in the coup,’” Cartia writes.
Recall Vote Fails
Once the discussion ended, it was time for a motion to cast secret ballots for the recall vote. This motion failed, “but not by much.”
Then came the recall vote itself, which was done by a public show of hands. Councilors counted the arms in the air, and Cartia suspects “notes are made as to whose arm is up and whose is down” by PPA leadership.
The recall vote failed.
” I think about how after three hours in the meeting, we were never given an explanation for why the PPA Chair, President and CEO formed a coup and invalidated that very valid October election. No one ever point blank asked the Chair for an explanation. All of this, all of it, and they still aren’t transparent. I wonder how many other shady things we don’t know about with these people,” Cartia writes.
“I think about the massive salaries of the CEO and CFO. $1.5 million a year in just those two salaries is almost all the revenue made in the trade show. It’s like we’re paying the CEO to lecture us. What a great gig that is,” she continues.
Editor’s note: In tax fillings for 2023 filed last November, executive compensation for PPA was listed at $1,366,442, which includes $711,615 in total compensation for David Trust and $654,827 for CFO/COO Scott Kurkian.
“I think about how today’s PPA is as transparent as mud… how it didn’t have to be this way,” Cartia muses.
“I’ve got some brush fires to light,” she concludes. “‘Cause I can’t just stand by while the ‘Forest of Professional Photography’ is allowed to burn.”
PetaPixel emailed the PPA for comment but it did not immediately respond. This story will be updated in the event the PPA responds.
Source link