1998
Founded
By four photographers who left a wire agency over a day rate.
About · Founded in 1998
An agency ownedby the peoplewho shoot for it.
Four photographers started it because the agency they worked for paid by the day, and a day is not long enough to photograph anything properly. Everything since has followed from that one complaint.
See the workEleven owners, and no plan to sell.
Since 2014 the agency has belonged to eleven of its photographers, every one of whom still shoots. Offers have been made — an archive of 1.4 million catalogued frames is worth more to a stock library than to us — and the undertaking not to sell is in the company's articles rather than in a mission statement.
That is not sentiment. An owner who does not shoot eventually asks why an assignment takes five weeks, and there is no good answer to that question from the outside.
Ninety-one percent of income is licensing and commissions. There is nobody above us asking a different question.
The agency in numbers
18
Photographers
Under contract on a retainer. Most have been here more than eight years.
60%
To the photographer
On every licence, archive or commissioned, published in the accounts.
1.4m
Frames on file
Every sheet since the first assignment, kept in the building.
How it got here
1998 to today
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1998
Founded above a framer’s workshop in the eleventh arrondissement. Four photographers, one darkroom, and a rule against day rates.
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2004
The first regional contract, in Beirut. The principle arrives with it: we do not send anyone anywhere they have not already lived.
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2009
The long projects begin, funded out of licensing. The first one is a stretch of coast, rephotographed every spring.
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2014
Ownership passes to eleven of the photographers, with a written undertaking not to sell the archive to a stock library.
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2019
The archive is catalogued back to 1998 by hand. It takes two people three years and is the best money the agency has spent.
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Today
Eighteen photographers, fourteen cities, the long projects still running, one assignment at a time.
How it is run
- Ownership
- A private company owned by eleven photographers, all of whom still shoot for it. No stock library, no fund, no outside investor.
- Copyright
- Held by the photographer, never by the agency. It is in the contract, not in a statement of values.
- Photographer voice
- Two photographers, elected each March, sit on the commissioning panel with full voting rights, including on which work is refused.
- Complaints
- A subject who objects to a photograph is answered by a panel that excludes the photographer who made it and the editor who filed it.
Who writes here
All the bylines- Idris Bakare
- Photographer · Dakar — Regional photographer, Dakar. Twelve years in the city, seven on the Work project, and a rule against photographing anyone who has stopped what they were doing
- Léa Fontaine
- Photographer · Marseille — Photographer, Marseille. Nine years on the southern coast and the only person here who shoots the same harbour every week
- Marta Kowalczyk
- Photographer · Warsaw — Regional photographer, Warsaw. Six years on one stretch of the Oder, which is the kind of thing a retainer is for
- Rafael Ortega
- Photographer · Mexico City — Regional photographer, Mexico City. Eleven years in the city and a habit of arriving a week before the file is opened
- Sophie Martin
- Photographer and archive editor — Photographer since 2006, and the person who decides which long projects are worth a decade
- Thomas Dubois
- Picture editor — Picture editor, responsible for the commissions and for who gets sent where
Judge it from one contact sheet.
Ask the archivist for a research folder on any subject. It is free, it takes about a week, and it is made of pictures that already exist.
Ask the archivist