Getty Images, the world’s leading photography agency, launched its publicity campaign around the new deal signed with Gamma-Rapho, the newly founded company directed by François Lochon, long-time Gamma photographer and new head of the Group Eyedea.
«Adding this collection perfectly complements our existing editorial content and gives added depth to our European archives, especially when combined with the immense historical value of the Keystone France archives. We’re very excited about sharing this combined effort with our clients. “ says Adrian Murrell, Senior Vice President and Global Editor of Getty Images.

In fact, this agreement, in final negotiations since last September, includes 35 000 archival photos from Keystone France’s collection plus 20 000 from Gamma, images to which Hachette Filippacchi Photos and then the Group Eyedea owned the rights. The Gamma-Rapho / Getty Images agreement does not yet include the photo archives of Rapho, Top, Hoa Qui, Jacana, etc. For that, we still need the photographers’ agreement.

This distribution contract between Gamma-Rapho and Getty Images has raised some technical problems in terms of cataloguing scanned images. « I can’t tell you the amount of (expletive) there are in the IPTC (International Press Telecommunications Council) » confides François Lochon in a phone conversation October 29th. The IPTC, text and indexing fields used for captions and photographer credits, in order to comply with international norms, in other words complying with Getty’s norms, forces each file to be opened on screen while credited… … We’re talking about thousands of existing files and millions more to come.

« I already have 30 people working on this in Madagascar » adds François Lochon passionate about this land of lemurs where there is a business development plan in place, since the French government is lagging somewhat behind in funding photojournalism.

Michel Puech