Illustrators as Charity Cases?

By Mark Kaufman
In the Sunday Styles section of the New York Times amongst the photos of Manhattan swells in the Evening Hours page, I saw a few snaps of The Society of Illustrators J.C. Leyendecker show. At first glance I thought, “Hey, ain’t that grand!”, on closer inspection however it was strangely disappointing. There were party photos of well-respected illustrators bracketed by social X-rays, which is all well and good, but the captions read…Peter de Séve, an illustrator and Tim O’Brien, an illustrator…as if they were merely accessories or the hired help or worst of all charity cases. Why can’t they be treated the same as the moneyed class in these photos? Am I wrong on this? I do not know who these socialites are in this section of the paper every week. Should I know? Should I care? I do not care about these folks one way or the other, they are attending charity events, or donating their time and dollars to good causes, so I harbor no grudges on their see and be seen nights out on the town, but it struck me as demeaning to classify the “illustrators” and not the trust fund babies and titans of industry that pepper the page. I am going to a book release party this evening, and I do hope someone snaps a photo of me. No title necessary.