Cradle of photography, France has been going through a lot of painful changes in the last 5 years. Recent news, according to photo website photographie.com, seem to confirm this trend:
Hachette Filipacchi photo group, formally GHFP, has been renamed EYEDEA. Quite certainly a play on words between EYE and IDEA, Eyedea boast a brand new website full of Flash animated images (some out of focus), a new management team (a reshuffle of the old team), while still using the same back-end database. We wish them the best of luck.
On a very sad note, agency EDITING is filing for bankruptcy. Having been in financial difficulty for quite a while, the French agency claims that the fall of editorial prices induced by sharp competition has forced them to take this drastic measure. “The value of images has dropped ” said Serge Challo, according to website photographie.com. EDITING was always on the forefront of quality images and technological advance. Hopefully, we will continue the see the work of their talented photographers distributed by other agencies.