Photo Agencies

Origins

While magazines and newspapers long used their own staff photographers, what would become the professional news and photo service developed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The work of such famous Civil War photographers as Mathew Brady had appeared widely, though often without the photographer's knowledge, let alone permission. In 1895, photographer George Bain began his Bain News Service, one of the earliest firms aimed at the burgeoning print media demand for pictures that had been created by development of the halftone printing process. Other companies soon followed. Underwood & Underwood was formed in 1901 and both Keystone View Company and Culver Pictures appeared about the same time. Later entries included United Newspictures (later Acme), and International News Photos (part of the news agency), both of which were set up in 1915. Wide World Photos followed in 1919, established by The New York Times, and the Associated Press began its AP Photos subsidiary in 1927 (it later would take over the Wide World operation, an early example of the consolidation to come).

Until the 1920s, photographs used in newspapers and magazines were either taken locally, or had to be shipped, creating a real deadline problem beyond New York City and other major markets. The only distribution means were by messenger within the city, or by mail outside. There was no effective way for daily newspapers to publish timely photographs of events taking place beyond their immediate local market. It often took several days to a week to get photographs sent from one side of the country to the other. Technology changed that in the mid-1920s.

The wirephoto process—a variation of facsimile technology—was invented as “telephotography” by telephone carrier AT&T in 1924. The new process allowed photographs to be transmitted through the telephone network, anywhere in the country, though it required the use of an expensive and bulky wirephoto machine at both the source and receiving end. The original photograph was placed inside the sender's machine and scanned line by line to translate the image into electrical impulses. These impulses were then sent by telephone line to the receiver where the impulses were translated back into a developed image on photographic paper.

AT&T offered its first commercial service in 1926 (though it would end in 1933 for lack of sufficient income to cover its costs). Early wirephoto machines were large, expensive, and all too often unreliable. The resulting wirephotos were usually [Page 1052]of low definition (far less clarity than any original photo—they were often described as “muddy”), and could be further degraded by occasional problems with telephone line transmission. Further, sending one often took more than an hour and the sender had no idea if a recognizable image would be received at the other end. Thanks to this complex and pricy process, it took more than a decade for the process to be widely adopted.

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