14
Cities of our own
Fourteen photographers under contract, on four continents.
The regions · Fourteen cities
Fourteen cities.Fourteen people.Nobody flown in.
A photographer who has lived somewhere for four years makes a different picture from one who landed on Tuesday. That difference is the whole reason for the expense.
Write to the deskSend someone who already lives there.
The cheap way to cover the world is to fly one photographer to wherever the news is. It produces competent pictures of arrivals, and it is why so much foreign photography looks like the same person visiting different countries.
Fourteen retainers cost more than fourteen plane tickets by a wide margin. It is the largest line in the budget after the Paris desk, and licensing pays for it directly.
In return, nothing filed from those cities was made by somebody who needed a fixer to find the street.
The network
4
Years, shortest stay
Nobody is posted somewhere they have not already lived.
0
Parachute jobs
We do not fly a photographer into a place they do not know.
Where the photographers are
Fourteen cities, four continents
- London and Dublin
- Two photographers. The closest to us in language and in law, and the pair we lend out most often.
- Madrid, Lisbon, Rome
- Three photographers covering southern Europe between them, with a fourth in Athens on a project rather than a retainer.
- Brussels, Berlin, Warsaw
- Three photographers. One of them has spent six years on a single stretch of the Oder, which is the kind of thing a retainer is for.
- Beyond Europe
- Six: Rabat, Dakar, Beirut, Delhi, Mexico City, Montréal. Every one of them has lived there at least four years.
How the regions work
- Contract, not commission
- Regional photographers are on the same monthly retainer as everyone else. A quiet year in their city is allowed to be quiet.
- Language
- A photographer works in the language of the place. Where they do not have it, the caption says so and names the person who interpreted.
- Fixers
- Credited by name unless naming them would put them at risk, and paid at a published rate rather than whatever the local market allows.
- Travel
- Paid by the agency, never by anyone with an interest in the pictures. No sponsored trips, no press junkets, no free flights.
- Consent
- Obtained in the language the subject speaks, and recorded against the frame. Where it cannot be obtained, the frame stays in the archive.
Somewhere we are not yet.
We add a city about every two years, and always by taking on somebody who is already there.
Say where you live and what you have been photographing for the last four years.