Photo Agencies Monday March 12, 2007
I’ve been looking at the stock image photo sites of Getty, Corbis and Alamy. I’ve known about them for years, never took much notice, but have now researched their ethos and mechanisms. They are responsible for significant changes in the photographic industry, consistent with further effects of the internet: this new digital realm where information is stored, shared and marketed, 24/7, world-wide, in which digital photographs are now a part. As Tim Berners-Lee, originator of HTML and arguably the founder of the WWW says:
The dream behind the Web is of a common information space in which we communicate by sharing information. Its universality is essential: the fact that a hypertext link can point to anything, be it personal, local or global, be it draft or highly polished. There was a second part of the dream, too, dependent on the Web being so generally used that it became a realistic mirror (or in fact the primary embodiment) of the ways in which we work and play and socialize. That was that once the state of our interactions was on line, we could then use computers to help us analyse it, make sense of what we are doing, where we individually fit in, and how we can better work together. (http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/ShortHistory.html)
Photography is a substantial part of this ‘dream’, albeit that the stock image sites have a commercial rather than a social-utopian basis. Getty says they
Provide up-to-the-minute images of the latest news, sport and entertainment events as they unfold around the world. Award-winning photography distinguishes our imagery, as we deliver unique shots of the moments that count — in digital format, in real time. Whether you’re looking for exclusive coverage of the latest sporting events, defining moments in news or backstage access to elite celebrity happenings, we bring our expertise where you need it most. Mark Getty and Jonathan Klein founded Getty Images in 1995 with the goal of turning a disjointed and fragmented stock photography market into a thriving, modernized industry able to meet the changing needs of visual communicators. We were the first company to license imagery via the web, moving the entire industry online.
The impact of the online agencies is profound. While working in Quark Express, at the click of a mouse you might search their databases rapidly and with ease, find the image you need for your project, purchase it within minutes, and insert it into your document. The agencies are taking the place of the convention where a photographer is employed for an assignment, possibly by travelling to a location and staying there for several days. The agencies do, however, represent only a partial dimension of photography: to a large extent you see the glossy, happy, lifestyle imagery typical of Sunday magazines. Technically accomplished, it tends towards the bland and bourgeois and/or fomulaic and gossipy: by which I mean, the topics about which the media is gossiping. There are ostensible exceptions – www.panos.co.uk specialises in the developing world and says: “Our photographers document issues and geographical areas which are under-reported, misrepresented or ignored. In a media climate dominated by celebrity and lifestyle Panos aims to provide fresh perspectives on the world” – but Panos is a relatively small concern, I’ve experienced some of their feedback, and found in practice they are motivated by money shots as much as everyone else. They may feature work from Africa – and some of it is very good – but only if it has a moneymaking voyeuristic appeal in that respect no different from Getty.
Having spent about three years investigating and enjoying photoblogs, and more recently www.flickr.com, there’s an interesting comparison here. It’s all photography, and yet the scale, outlets, contexts and objectives are different. The big agencies are industry based, corporate, and financially motivated: Alamy is associated with AOL, and Corbis is owned by Bill Gates. Getty began as an entrepreneurial dream with immense financial backing, buying up companies to both acquire their expertise and remove the competition. They weren’t photographers, they were businessmen in search of dollars. They state unashamedly that photographs have no inherent value; they only care about them in terms of market value, a situation itself defined by what world-wide gossip is currently fashionable. Unlike Panos, Getty Images is full of so-called celebrity photography. Mega-agency photography is limited; some of it is interesting and beautiful, and it’s difficult to generalise about many millions of images, but it tends to be quite predictable. Photoblogs and Flickr are personal, social, and expressive – pursued for artistic rather than financial reasons. And yet some of the work is the equal of any professional, and the same applies to photography at www.photo.net. Indeed, there’s some indication that Flickr is starting a new phase as a resource for picture editors, because it’s architecture is as cleverly engineered as the mega-agencies: images are classified by ‘tags’ (keywords) and can be located within seconds just as they can at Getty or Corbis. Admittedly, the majority of photos at Flickr are decidely amateur, reflecting personal concerns rather than journalistic gossip, although sometimes there’s a charm to that. Nonetheless, Flickr tags like ‘terror’, ‘atrocity’, or ‘bombing’ could easily lead to useful images, obtained from camera-phones or small point and shoots.
The paparazzi agency responsible for probably the iconic image of 7/7 – the elderly lady in a burn mask being assisted by a youger man – recently invited public contributions. Paris with a beaver flash? Charles with ice cream on his face? Beckham with his bum out? Hey, we’ll give you a few thousand for that and we ourselves will make considerably more. It’s grim, to see this low-life social pornography and how much photographic enterprise is devoted to it. Further grim to consider the reciprocal effect it then has, shaping people’s perceptions of life as communal dumbed-down nonsense. Susan Sontag noted that photographs are a limited resource for understanding: a fine, perceptive remark.
Paradoxically, Berners-Lee is also correct in saying “the Web being so generally used…it became a realistic mirror…of the ways in which we work and play and socialize…we could then use computers to help us analyse it, make sense of what we are doing, where we individually fit in, and how we can better work together”. What we find is indeed an instructive social reflection, and it’s not pretty.
My friends, each of you is a single cell in the great body of the State. And today, that great body has purged itself of parasites. We have triumphed over the unprincipled dissemination of facts. The thugs and wreckers have been cast out. And the poisonous weeds of disinformation have been consigned to the dustbin of history. Let each and every cell rejoice!
Ignore the nonsensical market branding at the end of this, and it becomes a terrific piece of video art:
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