Which are the biggest image agen­cies and archives in Rus­sia and the other East­ern European countries?

There is a num­ber of pho­to­graphy agen­cies in Rus­sia and East­ern Europe. The abso­lute major­ity of them spe­cial­ize in dis­tri­bu­tion of image archives from big for­eign agen­cies. To name but a few – Foto­bank, East-news and Fotolink in Rus­sia, All over Press in Rus­sia and Baltic States, Czarny Kot in Poland, Isifa in the Czech Repub­lic etc. You will find local rep­res­ent­at­ives of Getty images, Cor­bis, Mag­num pho­tos etc in almost every East­ern European coun­try. These agen­cies do not pro­duce any con­tent they just resell archives from their part­ners abroad. Often agen­cies sell those archives to other neigh­bor­ing coun­tries if there is no rep­res­ent­at­ive there directly.

There are also online image archives of big pub­lish­ing houses that carry the con­tent pro­duced by staff pho­to­graph­ers. This con­tent is gen­er­ally used by the houses them­selves or their syn­dic­a­tions, yet images are avail­able for external buy­ers as well. In Rus­sia (and Ukraine) the most well-known is Kommersant.

Which are the biggest image-agencies and archives in Rus­sia and the other East­ern European countries?

There is a num­ber of pho­to­graphy agen­cies in Rus­sia and East­ern Europe. The abso­lute major­ity of them spe­cial­ize in dis­tri­bu­tion of image archives from big for­eign agen­cies. To name but a few – Foto­bank, East-news and Fotolink in Rus­sia, All over Press in Rus­sia and Baltic States , Czarny Kot in Poland, Isifa in Czech Repub­lic etc. You will find local rep­res­ent­at­ives of Getty images, Cor­bis, Mag­num pho­tos etc in almost every East­ern European coun­try. These agen­cies do not pro­duce any con­tent they just resell archives from their part­ners abroad. Often agen­cies sell those archives to other neigh­bor­ing coun­tries if there is no rep­res­ent­at­ive there directly.

There are also online image archives of big pub­lish­ing houses that carry the con­tent pro­duced by staff pho­to­graph­ers. This con­tent is gen­er­ally used by the houses them­selves or their syn­dic­a­tions, yet images are avail­able for external buy­ers as well. In Rus­sia (and Ukraine) the most well-known is Kommersant.

Major news inter­na­tional agen­cies such as Reu­ters, AP, AFP etc have strong pres­ence in Rus­sia and East­ern Europe. They are the lead­ing source of news pho­to­graphy for the media, espe­cially when it comes to inter­na­tional news report­ing. Among national news agen­cies in Rus­sia we have government-funded ITAR-TASS and RIA news. How­ever, most of the national news agen­cies spe­cial­ize in local news and events and their main cli­ents are local news­pa­pers and magazines.

When it comes to agen­cies that fol­low the West­ern model of oper­a­tion and deal with pho­to­graph­ers on a per­sonal level (develop their pro­jects, look for assign­ments and pub­lic­a­tion oppor­tun­it­ies), there are just a few of them. The agency Salt Images that I co-founded is an example of this model. We func­tion more like per­sonal agents rather than a reselling agency.

As for the latest tend­en­cies, yet another form of agency should be men­tioned. It is pho­to­grapher col­lect­ive. I think a really good East­ern European example of this model would be Sput­nik Pho­tos. A group of pho­to­graph­ers from Belarus, Poland and Ukraine decided to unite their efforts and man­age their pro­jects together. What is import­ant is that they do not focus on selling their images in tra­di­tional ways. They rather find non-governmental fun­ders (NGOs) to sup­port their ini­ti­at­ives in the region. They have already pro­duced a com­pre­hens­ive sur­vey on Belarus and Ukraine.

How are the prices when the images are pub­lished in East­ern Europe?

In case of inter­na­tional archive dis­tri­bu­tion, prices are nor­mally determ­ined loc­ally by agency rep­res­ent­at­ives who have know­ledge of the local mar­ket budgets. In case of Rus­sia prices would be about the same com­pared to aver­age West­ern European fees. For inter­na­tional archives the aver­age is 70–250 EUR per page depend­ing on the usage, magazine budgets and some­times even prestige of the archive. There are spe­cial fees for celebrity and fash­ion images. These are usu­ally higher than the aver­age. How­ever, if we talk about journ­al­istic work, daily life, travel and report­age the fees would be within the price range.

One of the obser­va­tions I made while work­ing with edit­or­ial mar­ket in Rus­sia is that magazines would eas­ily pay high fees for inter­na­tional archive images, but try to save as much money as pos­sible when it comes to freel­an­cers – be it image usage or com­mis­sioned work. Magazines that would pay up to 2000 EUR for fea­tures bought from a dis­trib­utor expect freel­ances to pro­duce ori­ginal stor­ies for much lower budgets.

In my exper­i­ence, smal­ler fees are offered to both freel­ance and agen­cies in other coun­tries of East­ern Europe. Fee of 50 EUR per image regard­less of the space is con­sidered very good. Pho­to­graph­ers are rarely com­mis­sioned and a large share of con­tent is pro­duced by staff photographers.

How is the situ­ation with the rights for the images in East­ern Europe?

I sup­pose it var­ies from coun­try to coun­try. I do not think that the situ­ation with rights in Rus­sia is much dif­fer­ent when com­pared to the rest of the World. There is a copy­right law which is respec­ted by media in gen­eral. How­ever, when I say Rus­sia I mean Moscow, where the major­ity of image buy­ers are based. It is almost impossible to keep track of press in the regions where small local magazines still use images taken from the web without leg­ally licens­ing it.

How are pho­to­graph­ers organ­ised in East­ern Europe? Are there any organ­isa­tions that will help the pho­to­graph­ers to fight for there rights or the prices?

Most of the authors that pro­duce qual­ity journ­al­ism and per­sonal pro­jects are mem­bers of West­ern European/US agen­cies or freel­an­cers. I have not heard of a case when an estab­lished pho­to­grapher would desire to become a mem­ber of an agency from East­ern Europe. The goal is always to join a prom­in­ent agency, or some­times find great local rep­res­ent­at­ives for each of the cur­rently viable mar­kets: Ger­many, Italy, France, UK and US.

There has always been much talk­ing among Rus­sian pho­to­graph­ers and industry spe­cial­ists about cre­at­ing some kind of union to defend their rights. Pho­to­graph­ers are often fed up with being tricked into sign­ing con­tracts that make them refuse the right for their work and low fees. Some­times local pho­to­journ­al­ists face situ­ations where their basic rights such as free­dom of speech and free­dom of press are infringed by State author­it­ies. The lat­ter may deny pho­to­graph­ers per­mis­sion to shoot cer­tain objects and places. In such cases the sup­port from some kind of a union would be extremely use­ful. Still, the com­munity while being extremely seg­ment­ary has never man­aged to unite into a group or organ­iz­a­tion that would handle these issues.

Usu­ally pho­to­graph­ers just seek each other’s advice or approach trus­ted third parties with this kind of issues. Dur­ing my pro­fes­sional car­rier I’ve been asked to help with nego­ti­at­ing prices or take a look at con­tracts numer­ous times.

Which media, news­papaer, magazine are print­ing, show­ing (bying) the most images?

To fully answer this ques­tion, a little intro­duc­tion should be made. As a mat­ter of fact, the Rus­sian mar­ket has gone through a lot of changes within the past few years. When I star­ted to work as an edit­or­ial sales man­ager in 2005, I was really lucky to work with the most prom­in­ent inter­na­tional agen­cies straight ahead e.g. Mag­num pho­tos, Grazia Neri and Agen­tur Focus. No mat­ter how excited I was, I must say that at that time I faced huge dif­fi­culties try­ing to sell stor­ies and fea­tures to magazines. Most media insti­tu­tions ten­ded to pub­lish stock images with no social con­text whatsoever.

By the year 2007 the situ­ation has changed dra­mat­ic­ally. There was a lot of edu­ca­tion done by cur­at­ors and insti­tu­tions that would con­stantly pro­mote the best pho­to­graphy and explain its value to people at media houses. At one point qual­ity journ­al­ism has become a trend. The whole new gen­er­a­tion of photo edit­ors has emerged. In 2008 the global eco­nomic crisis hindered this devel­op­ment and now we have what we have.

The main mar­ket for edit­or­ial image licens­ing are magazines. News­pa­pers barely can afford to pur­chase qual­ity images.  The com­mon tend­ency in the mar­kets in gen­eral is that things are not going too well. And this tend­ency is uni­ver­sal — the num­ber of magazines cap­able to pub­lish and pay for strong visual con­tent is crit­ic­ally decreas­ing. In Rus­sia we wit­ness pos­it­ive epis­odes from time to time when a new team comes to a magazine and sud­denly things start to change. For some time they would pub­lish great stor­ies and pay for qual­ity images. But then comes a new team (there is never any logical explan­a­tion why the good old one is replaced) and it shifts down to stock pho­to­graphy or simply ‘cheap’ pho­to­graphy when qual­ity does not mat­ter. Often media are just treated like hob­bies by investors who they are ready to spend big budgets until they simply get bored.

In Rus­sia I would def­in­itely name Rus­sian Reporter magazine (since 2007). It is a weekly social and polit­ical magazine than not only pro­duces ori­ginal report­age both with prom­in­ent pho­to­graph­ers and young tal­ent but also is about the only one in the region with trans­par­ent hon­or­ary polit­ics and strong visual concept. Magazine has won sev­eral POYi (Pic­ture of the Year Inter­na­tional) awards for best place­ment of images.

There is no strong leader among the rest of image buy­ers but Rus­sian Ogo­niok magazine, Esquire magazine, Afisha Mir magazine, Bolshoy Gorod magazine are worth men­tion­ing. In Czech repub­lic there is a Reflex magazine that des­pite low budgets give a plat­form for pho­to­journ­al­ists by pub­lish­ing qual­ity stories.

Within the last few years there has been a huge devel­op­ment in online media. The num­ber of online magazines that would pur­chase and fea­ture pho­to­graphy has dra­mat­ic­ally increased. The budgets are still much less than print, but slowly online resources become great media to show­case the pho­to­graph­ers’ work.

Are there organ­isa­tions which are char­ging hon­or­ars from magazines or users who are using images? In ger­many we have e.g. http://www.bildkunst.de/html/index_e.html

No, there is no such organ­iz­a­tion. Although if it exis­ted it could be very help­ful in mon­it­or­ing copy­right issues in regional press, for example.

Are there price lists in rus­sia and East­ern Europe for image? We in Ger­many have e.g. the MFM List.

We have no lists like the MFM List. Everything is defined by the rules of mar­ket. The frus­trat­ing thing for freel­an­cers is the absence of any rate guides that would give them a strong idea about magazines’ fees. In most cases those are sub­ject to mar­ket nego­ti­ations between all parties involved.