So Getty Images has filed for bankruptcy. Excuse me while I locate my microscopic mandolin. Oh dear, how sad, never mind. I, for one, will not shed any tears. To misquote Churchill, never have so many photographers owed such a debt of ingratitude to so few. Back in the day we were all shafted by Getty, albeit sometimes unknowingly.
Getty flew too close to the sun and got burnt – in the process it left a photography industry that’s a shadow of its former self.
Sadly, I’m not blameless. When I was a young picture editor at the Independent and the Independent on Sunday, juggling million-pound budgets while under the cosh of the accountants and the bean counters, Getty offered a solution to my ever-growing problem. It seemed like such a great idea, something so simple that I kicked myself for not thinking of it. A free at the point of delivery monthly contract. No more guessing over reproduction fees or freelance shifts, just a fixed monthly fee. Predictable and budgetable.
An all-you-can-eat Getty binge
Once you had paid, you could binge on the visual delights of all of their photographers and the many agencies they had brought under their vast and terrible umbrella. A veritable buffet of images, a smorgasbord of sports and news. If you had a seat at the table, it was perfect. If not? Well, that was a different story.
The accountants were happy (which meant I was happy) but the freelancers starved. This one bright idea did more to destroy editorial photography than anything before or since, including the advent of AI.
The money fell out of the market, and freelance news photography starved to death. London, once home to a living, breathing, thriving microeconomy of press photographers – an incubator for new talent – died the death of a thousand cuts.
Once it had eaten news photography alive, it moved on to the then very lucrative market of stock photography, buying libraries and agencies with a view to infinite growth, with a fair bit of asset stripping on the way.
There was a time when stock photography made the photographer and the agency good money. It was a symbiotic relationship: the more commercial your images, the more you made, and the more valuable you were to the agency. Top stock photographers were rock stars, and the release of a new stock catalogue had all the pizzazz of a Hollywood Blockbuster (for me, at least). I remember at college in the 1980s, one such stock photography A-lister gave a talk about the money he was making with the legendary stock agency Tony Stone, and how, as long as we shot on fixed lenses (no zooms allowed) and used transparency film, we could share in his success.
I even recall how the auditorium gasped when the strange grey breezeblock-shaped briefcase next to him started ringing. A mobile telephone! He took the call in front of a hall full of awestruck photography students. We were sold.
The inevitable downfall of a giant
For a while, it seemed there was enough for everyone, but that wasn’t enough for some, and that symbiotic relationship became cancerous. Those monthly stock agency receipt notices became smaller and smaller. The only option was to submit more and more images for less and less money. The laws of scale may have worked in Getty’s favour, but they were economic ruin for photographers.
Thus Getty disrupted and destroyed photographic markets in its vision for infinite growth; in doing so, it conditioned buyers to expect vast quantities of imagery for less money. The maths still worked for them, provided it continued to grow; for the rest of the market, it salted the well.
Getty swallowed competitors until few remained. Once-grand names are now mere footnotes in photographic history: Telegraph Colour Library, Allsport, Colourific!
Then AI arrived and scuppered Getty’s plans. How about all the images you can imagine – for the price of one teeny-tiny monthly fee? No matter how fine your fare, if someone opens a stall next door, giving away something very similar, you will eventually go out of business. There was no loyalty left on Fleet Street. And few people were willing to pay for excellence when ‘good enough’ is part of a free buffet. AI has made everyone experts in mediocrity.
Getty’s response was to bet the farm on a merger with the giant agency Shutterstock. More growth! But that plan failed – Getty walked away from the deal when the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) insisted Shutterstock first sell off its global editorial business including Shutterstock Editorial, Backgrid and Splash. Getty’s fate was sealed.
No one saw it coming; they never do. New technology always disrupts in ways we can’t quite imagine. Think what would happen to Amazon if you could 3D print everything from grommets to ballpoint pens at home for free. Its business model would vanish just like Getty’s.
Getty was a bright star that grew too big too quickly and then imploded, leaving a black hole that sucked editorial photography into oblivion with it. I would say ‘I told you so’ but what’s the point when there’s no one left to listen?