5
Weeks, minimum
A picture agency · Paris · Since 1998
Four parts, four colours
Five weeks. One lens. Shot by hand, not by the day.
- Five weeks, minimum
- 18 photographers under contract
- 4,860 frames an assignment
- 1,320 of them from inside
- 1.4 million frames on file
- Nothing staged, ever
We don't parachute. We send someone, and we wait to be ignored.
A photograph made on the first day is a photograph of a stranger arriving. So nothing here is shot on a day trip: five weeks is the shortest commission we take, and most of what we file was made in the last two.
Eighteen photographers under contract, fourteen of them living where they work. Every frame is captioned with where and when, and nothing is ever added to or taken out of a picture.
One assignment at a time. It is enough.
The work
Four parts, one agency
18
Under contract
Photographers
On a monthly retainer, and fourteen of them live where they shoot.
See the photographers1.4m
Frames on file
14
Cities of our own
The assignment, as a contact sheet
4,860 frames · 1,320 from inside
Week 1 Arriving
780
Week 2 Being tolerated
820
Week 3 Being ignored
960 260 inside
Week 4 Inside
1,040 420 inside
Week 5 Leaving
1,260 640 inside
One mark for every twenty frames. The circled ones were made from inside — they begin in the third week, about when a photographer stops being a visitor, and they are half of the last week's take. The first fortnight buys the rest.
Week 1 5
Arriving
Nothing here belongs to anyone yet. The frames are of a place rather than of people, and almost all of them go.
780 frames
Week 2 5
Being tolerated
You are the man with the camera. People are polite, and polite is not what an assignment is for.
820 frames
Week 3 5
Being ignored
Somewhere in the third week the camera stops being an event. The first frames from inside are made here.
960 frames · 260 from inside
Week 4 5
Inside
Doors that were shut are left open. Half of what the desk files was made in this fortnight.
1,040 frames · 420 from inside
Week 5 5
Leaving
The last day is spent photographing what was missed. There usually is some.
1,260 frames · 640 from inside
One project, in full
All projects
- Frames
- 19,400
- Visits
- 17
- Years
- 4
Not crossings in the news sense. What a border does to the places twenty kilometres either side of it, photographed over four years along the Oder.
Open the projectWhat you are commissioning
- Commissions
- Five weeks minimum, ten typical. We turn down anything that has to be shot in a day, however well it pays.
- Extent
- About 4,860 frames on a five-week assignment, of which 1,320 are made in the last fortnight, once the camera has stopped being noticed.
- Photographers
- Eighteen under contract on a monthly retainer, fourteen of them living in the country they cover. Nobody here is paid by the picture.
- The archive
- 1.4 million frames since 1998, catalogued by hand. Contact sheets are kept, including for the assignments that came back with nothing.
- What we will not do
- Stage a photograph, move an object, add or remove anything in a frame, or pay a subject to appear in one.
- Licensing
- From €340 for a single editorial use. The rate card is published each January, and archive research is free.
Blog — written by the photographers
All articles Five things worth knowing before you commission us Written for picture editors deciding whether to spend €14,000 and five weeks on one photographer, including the parts that put people off. Read The assignment that came back empty, and why we filed it anyway Eight weeks on a story that turned out not to be there. We catalogued all 6,900 frames, and the desk would do the same again. Read Why the first week is thrown away Most agencies research a place and then photograph it. We send the photographer first, and the reason is not romance about shoe leather. Read
One assignment. Five weeks, minimum.
Commissions are taken all year and answered within two working days.
Archive research is free, whether or not you licence anything.