photo agency
photo agency, a type of company that provides photographs for commercial users including news media. Such companies usually make, collect or archive, and distribute photographs for a fee, either on a subscription or on a per photo basis, the price depending on the use of the image. Photo agencies often use their own photographers and distribute images shot by others (including smaller photo services and independent photographers). During the first two decades of the 21st century, the contraction of the media industry as a whole and relentless consolidation among companies that act as photo agencies significantly altered the face of the business.
Origins and early development
While magazines and newspapers long used their own staff photographers, what would become the professional news and photo service developed in the late 19th century and the early 20th century. The work of such famous American Civil War photographers as Mathew Brady had appeared widely, though often without the photographerâs knowledge, let alone permission. In 1895, photographer George Bain began his Bain News Service, one of the earliest firms aimed at the burgeoning print media demand for pictures that had been created by development of the halftone printing process. Other companies soon followed. Underwood & Underwood was formed in 1901, and both Keystone View Company and Culver Pictures appeared about the same time. Later entries included United Newspictures (later Acme) and International News Photos (part of the news agency), both of which were set up in 1915. Wide World Photos followed in 1919, established by The New York Times, and the Associated Press began its AP Photos subsidiary in 1927 (it later would take over the Wide World operation, an early example of the consolidation to come).
Until the 1920s, photographs used in newspapers and magazines were either taken locally or had to be shipped, creating a real deadline problem beyond New York City and other major markets. The only distribution means were by messenger within the city, or by mail outside. There was no effective way for daily newspapers to publish timely photographs of events taking place beyond their immediate local market. It often took several days to a week to get photographs sent from one side of the country to the other. Technology changed that in the mid-1920s.
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Technological innovation: from wirephoto to Laserphoto
The wirephoto processâa variation of facsimile technologyâwas invented as âtelephotographyâ by telephone carrier AT&T in 1924. The new process allowed photographs to be transmitted through the telephone network, anywhere in the country, though it required the use of an expensive and bulky wirephoto machine at both the source and receiving end. The original photograph was placed inside the senderâs machine and scanned line by line to translate the image into electrical impulses. These impulses were then sent by telephone line to the receiver where the impulses were translated back into a developed image on photographic paper.
AT&T offered its first commercial service in 1926 (though it would end in 1933 for lack of sufficient income to cover its costs). Early wirephoto machines were large, expensive, and all too often unreliable. The resulting wirephotos were usually of low definition (far less clarity than any original photoâthey were often described as âmuddyâ) and could be further degraded by occasional problems with telephone line transmission. Further, sending one often took more than an hour, and the sender had no idea if a recognizable image would be received at the other end. Thanks to this complex and pricy process, it took more than a decade for the process to be widely adopted.
AP began its wirephoto service in 1935 with links to 47 newspapers in 25 states. The first AP wirephoto showed an airplane crash in rural New York. United Press Telephoto appeared in the next year. The two news agency photo operations quickly dominated the business for newspapers as they focused on the latest news events. As the technology became easier to use, wirephotos became the dominant form of long-distance photo distribution for newspapers well into the mid-1970s.
By then, building on constantly improving photographic and printing technology, AP instituted its Laserphoto system. This sent images to subscribers far more quickly than the old wirephoto equipment and with much higher image resolution. AP updated this system in 1989 so that full color images could be transmitted in just seconds. These images were displayed on computer monitors and distributed in digital form. The result was newspaper and magazine pictures of much higher quality and the more common use of color photographs. Eventually, the news agencyâowned photo operation would garner more than 30 Pulitzer Prizes for its news photographs. By the mid-2000s, AP was distributing a thousand photos a day and had accumulated an archive of some 11 million images.
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Expansion and diversification
Starting in the mid-1930s, and doubtless encouraged by the appearance of a growing number of photo-based weekly and monthly magazines as well as improving camera technology, a second wave of photo agencies began to appear. They combined current news photos with a growing photo archive of material, dubbed picture libraries, or (later) image banks. One of the first was Black Star, formed in 1935 by three refugees from Nazi Germany, one of whom brought some 5,000 photos from his Berlin photo agency. Black Star worked closely with the new Life magazine when it appeared starting in November 1936 and sometimes accounted for more than 40 percent of the weekly magazineâs images. Otto Bettmann established his Bettmann Archive in 1936, which soon stressed historical photos. And in 1938, Edward Hulton created the Hulton Picture Library. All of these firmsâand the earlier photo agenciesâwere active on the battlefronts and the home fronts of World War II.
The Magnum agency first appeared in 1947 when photojournalists Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, George Rodger, and David âChimâ Seymour formed it to distribute their photographs while protecting their image ownership rights. Initially based in Paris and New York and later adding offices in London and Tokyo, Magnum differed from other agencies in two ways. It was created as a cooperative venture in which the staff (which included cofounders Maria Eisner and Rita Vandivert) would support rather than direct the photographers. And copyright to their photos would be retained by the photographers, not by the magazines that published them.
Hubert Henrotte, Hughes Vassal, and Raymond Depardon established the Gamma agency in 1967, and the Sygma agency was created in 1973. But by now, the picture magazines on which so many agencies had long thrived were disappearingâLife, for example, had ceased its weekly publication the year before. As media clients dwindled, photo agencies were forced to broaden their business model to serve a wider variety of clients. Many branched out to serve commercial needs such as providing photos for use in company annual reports, brochures, or other business and industrial applications.
Consolidation
With the rise of the Internet came both a new way to market photosâplacing masses of them online for easy perusal by potential customersâand a continuing decline in traditional media photo markets. Photo agencies increasingly centered their marketing toward nonmedia business users. Web software could also be used to help seek out and fine those illegally placing copyright-protected photos on their own websites.
As with the companies they serve, major consolidation of photo agencies began in the 1980s, accelerating in the years to follow. For example, Kraus purchased the Bettmann Archive in 1981. Three years later, Kraus took over the United Press International collection (which included the Acme and Pacific & Atlantic agency archives as well). Kraus, in turn was taken over by Corbis in 1995 (the agency formed in 1989 by Bill Gates of Microsoft). Corbis also purchased Sygma in mid-1999. A private equity firm purchased Getty Images for $2.4 billion in 2008 and then sold it for more than $3 billion in 2012, underscoring the scale at which the business was working.
The original version of this article was published by SAGE Publications in The SAGE Encyclopedia of Journalism.