Agencies, photographic, organizations that sell photographers' work to the periodical press and other clients, and/or negotiate commissioned assignments for their members. Although their relations with photographers have often been difficult, agencies, like art dealers, have brought a degree of order and stability to an ever larger and more complex market place.
Historically, agencies have taken various forms, and been surrounded by much myth. Details of their practices are often hard to establish. Roughly speaking, however, they can be divided between those which employ photographers, and those run by photographers on a cooperative basis (Magnum Photos, founded in 1947, being the most famous), in which members choose their assignments and, crucially, own the copyright of their work. Agencies can also be divided—though the boundaries are often blurred—between those dealing with up-to-the-minute news photographs (press agencies, agences de presse), and those concentrating on human-interest and other subjects with longer-term appeal, and supplying book publishers as well as periodicals (picture agencies, agences d'illustration). Modern examples of the former include Gamma (f. 1967), and of the latter, Rapho, founded in 1933 and relaunched in 1946. A third category, increasingly common since the mid-20th century, has specialized in a particular field: the Nautical Photo Agency, for example, or the Gérard Vandystadt sports agency.
It might be argued that the operations of Mathew Brady, who employed up to twenty photographers in the early years of the American Civil War (1861-5), were akin to those of an agent. However, as direct reproduction of photographs in the press was still impossible, and most ‘Brady’ pictures were distributed as
Although Viktor Bulla produced many photographs of the 1917 revolutions in Petrograd (St Petersburg), wartime conditions and the shrinkage of the Russian illustrated press limited their circulation. The political upheavals in Berlin in 1918-19, however, were recorded by photographers working for at least ten agencies, and distributed via the German capital's c. 150 newspaper offices throughout Central Europe. In the 1920s agencies continued to multiply in Germany and elsewhere. Although most were either politically neutral or (broadly) ‘bourgeois’ in character, some left-wing organizations like the German Communist Party's Unionbild agency, which distributed Soviet and ‘proletarian’ images, also appeared. One important European agency of the inter-war period was the Berlin-based Dephot (f. 1928), which employed Umbo, Felix Man, and, briefly, Robert Capa. Another was the Parisian Alliance Photo, founded in 1934 by Maria Eisner (1909-91), which developed an international distribution network, and a stable of photographers that included Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, David (Chim) Seymour, and Pierre Verger. One of Alliance's American contacts was the Black Star agency, founded in 1936 in New York by three Berlin émigrés. It flourished partly because of its connections with European photographers and publishers, partly because of the close ties it formed with Life magazine. It paid its core of regular photographers a monthly salary regardless of whether they worked (Alliance paid a monthly advance), feeding them ideas hammered out at a weekly partners' meeting and selling the results to editors.
Another important inter-war development was the growing interest of the big news agencies in photographs. In 1927 Associated Press (AP) inaugurated its News Photo Service, then on 1 January 1935 the AP Wirephoto network, which transmitted images to the agency's subscribers over telephone lines, albeit with complex and cumbersome equipment. Within months, AP's competitors were offering similar services using simpler methods. Other companies, including Agence France Presse and Reuters, followed suit after the Second World War.
The founding of Magnum in 1947 was a long-heralded response by photographers to the problems of working with conventional agencies. The biggest of these concerned attribution, since many photographers had to work anonymously; freedom to choose assignments; remuneration and security of employment; copyright ownership; and control over work submitted, since images, once sold, were often recaptioned and/or cropped in ways unacceptable to the photographer. Magnum's cooperative structure, the retention of copyright by its members, and their ability to pursue their own projects, addressed these issues, although it could not insulate itself entirely from the media changes of the next 60 years. Magnum's size, with offices in Paris, London, New York, and Tokyo, and nearly 80 photographers in its three membership categories, also created tensions, resulting in the departure of some leading figures (for example, James Nachtwey, who formed a new agency, VII).
The second half of the 20th century brought other developments. The rise of television and the financial problems of the classic news magazines in the 1950s and 1960s encouraged the growth of flexibly organized Paris-based agencies, strategically placed to cover events in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, that could provide news photographs more quickly and cheaply than magazines' own staff photographers. In conjunction with improved transmission of photographs, they were also well placed to meet transatlantic press deadlines. The reputation of French photojournalism was enhanced by coverage of the Algerian War (1955-62) by photographers working for agencies such as Reporters Associés (1955) and Dalmas (1956). The 1960s and 1970s saw the emergence of important new agencies, including Gamma, which adopted a number of features pioneered by Magnum, such as profit sharing and protection of photographers' copyright; the breakaway Sygma in 1973; and a third important newcomer, Sipa. Particularly Gamma and Sygma became giants in the hot news field, helping to maintain Paris's pre-eminence through the 1980s. (Another group, Viva, founded in 1972 and dedicated to social-issue reportage, struggled to survive.)
In the early 21st century the global media market place is volatile, and likely to remain so. Notwithstanding the emergence of new small agencies like VII, an important trend has been towards mergers and cross-media gigantism. American agencies like Contact Press Images (f. 1976) consolidated their position, and new large organizations entered the arena, most notably Getty Images and Corbis, both initially as picture archives but soon in the business of commissioning images through their own contracted photographers. Some medium-sized organizations joined larger combines: Rapho, for example, allied itself with the magazine-publishing group Hachette Filipacchi (Elle, Paris Match) in 2000. Driving these changes was the advantage to media conglomerates of extending control over a range of products: not only photographs, but film and TV output and graphic images, all increasingly in digitized form. A central issue in the early 21st century, despite the proliferation of cooperatives and professional organizations, is the bargaining power and operational freedom of photographers on this chessboard of outsize players.
— David Matthews/Robin Lenman
Bibliography
- Fulton, M. (ed.), Eyes of Time: Photojournalism in America (1988).
- Hoffman, B. (ed.), Exploiting Images and Image Collections in the New Media: Goldmine or Legal Minefield? (1999).
- Amar, P.-J., Le Photojournalisme (2000)
