Rapho, agency founded by the Hungarian Charles Rado, active in Paris 1933-40. It was vital in bringing such émigré photographers as Brassaï, Nora Dumas (1890-1979), Ergy Landau (1896-1967), and Ylla (Kamilla Koffler; 1911-55) into contact with pre-war France's booming illustrated press and advertising industry. Rado, who had left Germany (where he had worked for Ullstein) in 1933, emigrated to the USA in 1940. But Rapho was restarted in 1946 by Raymond Grosset, who from modest beginnings, bicycling between editors, photographers, and an improvised office, restored it to prominence. Grosset sold his photographers' essentially humanistic output to both the communist and Catholic press and, a fluent English speaker, secured lucrative American assignments for Doisneau (one of the refounded agency's leading members, with Boubat, Brihat, and Dieuzaide) and others in the 1940s and 1950s when earnings in France were meagre. Later, Rapho diversified in the face of changing market conditions. In 1977 it acquired the TOP agency and in the 1990s (now run by Grosset's children Mark and Kathleen) branched out into medical and gastronomic photography and increasingly pursued institutional and corporate work. In 2000 it joined the Hachette Filipacchi magazine-publishing group.
— Robin Lenman
