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Closed, shut down and out

Green Recovery, new owners of what used to be Hachette Filipacchi Photo Group ( Gamma, Rapho, Explorer, Hoa Qui,Top) have decided to shut down their New York operation. The whole staff has been laid off. It’s a very sad thing. Gamma, among others, used to be one of the 3 great photo agencies in the world, along with SIPA and SYGMA. Under Michel Bernard, Gamma-Liaison, the New York operation of Gamma, used to be a thriving operation, so much so that Getty bought it for a cool $8 million dollars at the time. They had magnificent offices on Bryant Park and were the talk of the town. Years later, Jean Pierre Laffont, with such great names as Jean Pierre Pappis ( Currently president of Polaris) and James McGrath (currently President of AtlasPressPhoto) had revived it, only to be shut down by the upper echelons of Hachette in France.

Gamma was not killed by microstocks, nor was it destroyed by Getty or Corbis. Gamma was sunk by extremely incompetent management. Following the lead of companies like Corbis, the powers at Hachette decided to put fresh out of business school CEO’s thinking that this business is the same then any old business. Committees, internal politics, fratricide, enormous amounts of red tape, bureaucracy, conservative thinking, all added up to sucking the air of a tremendous talent pool. Obsessed by saving money rather than making money, these so called leaders forgot that the only way to make a plant grow healthy is to water it frequently, not to save on the water consumption. Great photojournalism, like great celebrity imagery, is a gamble. In order to be there at the right time you have to invest time, money and resources. If you play you cards right, you get those winning shots and get back 5, 10 times your investments. You take a part of your earnings and re-invest in the next story. If you decide to play it safe and wait for these images to come to you, it will never happen.

The second major mistake these CEO did was to ignore the digital evolution of this industry. Thus they were trying, desperately, to follow it, step by step, instead of plunging into it with one big leap. Resisting change is a killer.
In short, that is what happened with Gamma. The triumph of “the suits”, those fed on business rules that cannot and will not be applied to the photography world, those who excel at meetings and self promotion, those who cannot see intelligence and talent in other people, those who couldn’t care less about the damage they leave behind. All the CEO’s of Gamma have cozy jobs today. The hard working staff of Gamma are on the street.

Don’t believe for an instant this is limited to Gamma or / and the French. Corbis would be in the same situation today if it wasn’t for the deep pockets, and apparent dedication of its sole owner.

What really bothers me is what happens to the photographers, the images, the hours of hard and dedicated work, the passion and commitment, the sleepless nights, the tormented hours, the joys and group satisfaction, the proud and irreplaceable moments, the successes and triumphs, and those very early mornings when you finally came home from work with a tired smile of victory on your face ?

To those who have spend part of there lives at Gamma New York, past and present, photographers as well as staff employees, I salute you.

This entry was posted on April 26, 2007 at 7:33 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

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3 Responses to “Closed, shut down and out”

  1. Pino Granata says:
    April 26, 2007 at 10:11 am

    Dear Paul, you say that Gamma has not been killed by Microstock, Getty or Corbis. Well my opinion is that Gamma , and all the photo agencies of the group which includes Stills, Explorer and others, has not been killed only by Microstock, RF, Getty and Corbis.You know better than me agencies like Gamma, Sygma, Sipa Contact etc used to work. Assignements, close relationship with photographers, lot of file sales and , above all a great repution among the magazines and editors. In my opinion agencies don’t sell anymore the pictures file which once were important for all the agencies, also we get very few assignements and also I think that the photoreportage has lost a lor of appeal.All the stock photo market has not become Walmart or Target, but 99 cents shops.

  2. pmelcher says:
    April 26, 2007 at 1:23 pm

    Dear Pino,

    I still see great images being published. I still see great deals being done. Furthermore, neither Corbis nor Getty and certainly not the Microstock’s or other cell phone User generated content provider can or even would know how to compete. I disagree with you, photojournalism is not dead. It is actually doing better than ever because it is reinventing itself. When I hear a photo editor at Getty telling me that although they have full access to cover presidential candidate Obama they will not do it, I smile. They are a “wire service’ therefore, they do not do in depth stories.
    Well,here,for the first time in the history of the United States of America, you have an African American running for president with a real chance of winning and those idiots at Getty do not consider that something to cover fully. I would stick a photographer to this guy like glue and follow him everywhere. Its history happening right now. That is one opportunity among many.
    Gamma and others died because of poor managements, of bad decisions, and Getty just filled in the holes and gaps. Photography is a vision, an understanding of the world, not just another business.

  3. Pino Granata says:
    April 27, 2007 at 3:25 am

    The obsession of saving money instead of making money. This is the problem of the editorial business today. In Italy it is the same thing. The most sold magazine in Italy 15 years ago used to sell almost 3 million copies a week. Instead of trying to sell more, the new publisher started on cutting the expenses. Less stories, less editors, less expenses anyway. The result is that the magazine ten years later sells less than a million copies a week and the trend is to sell 10 % less a year. First thing to be reduced, when the publisher wants to save money, is the expense for pictures. I remember a meeting with the management of the biggest publishing house in Italy. At that the time the cost of paper was skyrocketing and the solution of the problem for them it was to reduce the budget for the pictures. It’s difficult to understand why, how Paus says, instead of investing on making a better product, the publishers reduce the expenses of the pictures. In the most of cases this choice means the end of the magazine and loss of everything.

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