Photojournalism in China: A Decade Change Part II: 2) Photographic Market
a) Getting Images form China
Like elsewhere in the world, the Internet and photo agencies online have also changed the photographic market in China totally. Just a few years ago, if a U.S. newspaper would like to find a picture about China, China’s official news agency Xinhua was almost the only place it could turn to for help. Today, there are more than dozen photo agencies in China that can meet such request, if the standard of international image quality is not an issue here. Typical photo suppliers in China included www.photomall.info, www.imaginechina.com, www.photocome.com, www.colphoto.com, www.cnsphoto.com, www.newsphoto.com, www.chinafeatures.com, www.featurechina.com, www.fotoe.com, www.documentchina.com, www.sun-pix.com, just to name a few.
Online photo agencies in China can be divided into two groups: one, such as www.imaginechina.com, www.photocome.com, www.colphoto.com, is invested by foreign venture capital, and the other is launched by traditional Chinese media, such as www.photomall.info by Xinhua, www.cnsphoto.com by China News Service and www.newsphoto.com by China Daily. In the pre-Internet era, Xinhua, with its own photo transmitting system, monopolized photo supply inside China. During the Internet age, its international news photo service is shared by www.photocome.com (agent for Getty, Sipa, etc.), www.colphoto.com (agent for wwp, Kyodo News and New York Times) and www.imaginechina.com (agent for AP, AFP, EPA, Magnum, Gamma, ICON International, JBG, Zuma, Contrasto, LA Times, LAIF, etc.), while its domestic news photo service is shared by www.cnsphoto.com, www.newsphoto.com, www.chinafeatures.com, www.fotoe.com, www.photocome.com, www.imaginechina.com, etc.
For many years, AP, AFP and Reuters were the only western mainstream media to have staff photographers stationed in China. This situation has also changed in the past two years. EPA (Europe Photo Agency) launched its Beijing bureau in 2003, followed by Getty and Corbis. Reuters, AFP and Getty are not just assigning photographers in Beijing and Shanghai, they already recruited a team of stringers in other major cities around the country. Chinese photographers already see more and more foreign photographers running through Beijing’s Hutongs (small alleys), and they would expect to meet more photographers, staff and freelancing, foreign and Chinese, in other parts of China.
B) Selling images to China
Flourishing of Chinese photo agencies makes it possible for foreign photo agencies, including some with international reputation, to sell their images to China. As some Chinese regulations still forbid foreign news media from selling their products inside China, the first step for a foreign photo agency to get into China’s market is to find a Chinese agent. This is true to all those foreigners that have entered China, including Getty (Newsmaker and Allsports) Sipa, Gamma, AP, AFP, Reuters, Laif, and Zafa.
[FS:PAGE] Even though the price of the image sold in China is not yet satisfactory to the copyright owners as compared with western standard, a study shows the sales have increased ten times annually in recent years. Photocome.com, one of the largest online photo agencies and the exclusive agent for Getty in China, for example, recorded a sales volume of several dozen thousand RMB (a U.S. dollar equals 8.2 RMB) in 2001, several hundred thousand in 2002, several million
C) Photographers and Picture Editors
During the past ten years, China has witnessed several dozen, if not hundreds, new newspapers and magazine launched each year. In every large city, such as Guangzhou, Chengdu, Beijing and Shanghai, there are metropolitan dailies, which are still owned by the government but are much more market-oriented. Among those with a large circulation are Southern Metropolitan Daily (Nan-Fang-Du-Shi-Bao) in Guangzhou, with a circulation of more than a million, Beijing Youth Daily in Beijing and Chinese business Daily (Hua-Shang-Bao) in Xi’an with a circulation of more than half a million. Meanwhile, newsweeklies, as well as entertaining publications for leisure of high printing quality, have also been launched in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.
With more newspapers and magazines in the market, there comes greater demand for photos, which gives way to more photojournalists and picture editors in the newsrooms. The number of employees in a newspaper’s photo department has expanded from a couple to a dozen in the past decade. The Southern Metropolitan Daily in Guangzhou is more unusual to hire 50 photographers and picture editors today. A college graduate with photojournalism major can easily find a job, sometimes with two or three offers at once right after they walk out of the college.
U.S. experts have also made their contributions in the training of photojournalists in China. Among them, Robert Pledge of Contact Press Images seems to be a pioneer, who is now regarded as a godfather of Chinese photojournalists. Following him are Vincent Alabiso of AP and Michele Stephenson of Time magazine in 1996, Jim Dooley of Newsday in 1996 and then in 2003, Mark Edlson of Palm Beech Post in 2001, Michele McNally of Fortune magazine (now New York Times) in 2002, and Richards Ellis of Getty in 2004. Hundreds of Chinese photographers and picture editors packed the classrooms while they lectured in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Wuhan. |
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