A Brief History of Stock Photography — The Beginning (Part 1)
Contrary to what you might think, the history of stock photography is less a history of technique or creative process than it’s a history of technology, business models and industry disruption.
Whether it’s photos, illustrations, videos, audio clips or any other kind of licensable content, the success differentiator consistently boils down to two factors: how to find what you need, and how you’ll pay for it.
It’s also a history of evaluation: how much buyers are willing to pay, and how much artists, when licensing their work through agencies, will ultimately earn.
This brief history will take you through a few generations of licensing, technology, and disruption: from a niche market where creatives had control over their images to a crowded multi-billion dollar landscape where artists are losing control by the minute.
Nostalgia Galore: Stock in the 80's
Stock goes as far back as the beginning of the twentieth century, but for the purposes of this piece, we’ll look at the past 38 years: 1980 forward.
In the 80’s stock allowed art directors, photo editors and image researchers to quickly access photos and illustrations and capture concepts and ideas without producing a photoshoot.
Agencies like The Stock Market, and a handful of others had a solution: get photographers to shoot existing content people will need, catalog it by theme, and art directors needs will be solved.
Need an image of a tornado? Got it. Young businessman looking like he’s straight out of Oliver Stone’s Wall Street? Diverse group of children in a classroom? That too.
Many of these agencies were started by photographers. Tony Stone, for example, was an 80’s pioneer who developed an archived based on behavioral patterns he was seeing in client requests. Stone could anticipate what they might want and provide it in place of a photoshoot. He launched Tony Stone Images to solve that problem.
In the early days, libraries sold images under a “rights managed” license:
Buyers paid for a specific use like a billboard or a book cover and could use it for a specific length of time, and creators got a healthy payout.
The technology was old school and analog: images were stored as prints, slides and transparencies. A few times a year, agencies would mail hulking printed catalogues to buyers who would call in image requests or flip though cabinets of transparencies and Kodachrome slides.
The 90’s are here: CD ROMs, Floppy Disks, and Royalty Free Licenses
As tech progressed, agencies got their work digitized and online. One of the first to digitally advance was Photodisc, launching in Seattle in 1991, shipping images on floppy disks and cds. Directors could access content right away.
Another major change was Photodisc’s “Royalty-Free” license. Instead of the ultra-specific Rights Managed terms, buyers could pay a flat rate and use images indefinitely. The industry — photographers and libraries alike — freaked out: this new model might be a threat to the way they’d been doing things for years.
We should note that at the time there were tons of speciality libraries licensing images. Agencies like Science Photo Library, AlaskaStock and dozens of others, a few who still exist today, offered niches of imagery for specific needs.
Buyers had to go to a range of sources to get what they need — a rather tedious task which opened the gates for a new, “one-stop-shop” business model to step in.
And then came Getty and Corbis
The range of agencies — from mom and pop to something more corporate — as well slow-tech tools for getting images may have been a catalyst for Getty and Corbis, a new type of agency: the conglomerate. These models, launched by moneyed pioneers like Bill Gates and Mark Getty, disrupted the industry with a model of acquisition and consolidation.
In the next post, we’re diving into the incredible growth of Getty and Corbis and the dramatic change they brought to the industry, and continue to explore the fascinating history of stock photography. Read the next part!
