What do you do when all the images offered on the market start looking more and more like each other ? In a space dominated by a few major international stock photo agencies who produce images at factory pace under the barking orders of creative directors armed with numbered filled excel spreadsheets and whose vocabulary rarely escapes the tightly limited boundaries of “returns”, “profits” and “margins”, there are few options besides creating your own garden. That is what PlainPicture chose to do, back in 2001, when it was founded in Hamburg, Germany by Valentin Alscher and Roman Härer, both photo designers, and Astrid Herrmann, graphic designer.

Right from the beginning, they decided to be vastly different by offering off mainstream images. By seeking image artists, rather than shooters, and submitting their work to intense editing, they quickly redefined the genre by offering exclusive and original content. From Germany, they have since geographically expanded with offices in Paris, London and New York. They also expended by diversifying their portfolio of images, making alliances with like minded collections .

Browsing PlainPicture is like no other experience. Some images might stun you, some might even offend you, others will charm you and other still will probably make you look twice, none, however, will leave you neutral. For example, you will never see a picture of a perfect gleamy model on any of their images. Because they do not exist in real life, Plainpicture does not want them in their collection. For art directors and photo editors looking step out of the soporific photo illustration comfort zone, the one that has created a virtual photographic blindness , Plainpicture is their life preserver. On top of having many very talented photographers Plainpicture prides itself on its acute editing, allowing them to display an impressive collection of photographic intelligence.

Paul Melcher

For more information : http://www.plainpicture.com/ or send an email to newyork@plainpicture.com. If you are a photo agency and would a like to participate to this weekly column, please send a note to Paul Melcher at paul.melcher@lalettredelaphotographie.com