Viktor & Rolf , fashion designers, Amsterdam, February 2006
Not Just Through Italian Eyes
Scenes of carnage following the fall of the World Trade Center / Twin Towers in Lower manhattan, NY where 2 hijacked planes crashed into the towers, causing over 5000 deaths. James Nachtwey who lives only blocks away, was one of the first photographers on the scene.
In a country with a highly developed publishing industry catering to fine publications, fashion and sport magazines as well as two internationally renowned newspapers, Corriere della Sera and La Stampa, as well as La Repubblica, it is not surprising that two of the world’s top flight photo agencies and publishing houses are located in Italy. The agency Grazia Neri, founded in 1967 by Grazia Neri herself, and Contrasto, founded almost twenty years later by Roberto Koch, are major players in the world photojournalism scene. Each agency represents approximately forty photographers and handles distribution in Italy and elsewhere for other major organisations. Both agencies have also had to adapt to the radical changes in the industry including digitalisation and the rise of the mega-agencies like Corbis and Getty. Grazia Neri is based in Milan while Contrasto maintains offices both there and in Rome.
Of the two agencies, Grazia Neri was first to embrace digital technologies, presciently recognising back in 1989 that it would hit the photography world “like a tsunami,” as she put it. The agency is completely on line and handles distribution for such noted photoagencies as AFP, Blackstar, and VII as well as the archives of Paris Match, Sports Illustrated, and TASS. It also distributes material by Franz Lanting, the noted wildlife photographer. The photographers and photojournalists who are the bread and butter of the agency include Lorenzo Castore who won the Leica European Publishers Award in 2005, Massimo Barutti who picked up one of three prizes won by Grazia Neri photographers at this year’s World Press Photo contest, Anthony Suau whose war reportage is also internationally recognised, and Pep Bonet and Bruno Stevens, other frequent World Press Photo prize winners known for very dark work from war torn Africa. The agency also features the likes of Donna Ferrato, a New York based photographer whose work on domestic violence in the 1980s and 1990s was ground-breaking, Paul Lowe, Gerd Ludwig, and Mary Ellen Mark, names needing no introduction. A host of younger photographers such as Espen Eichhofer, Justin Jin, and Frank Rothe, as well as the pair, Mathias Braschler and Monika Fischer, represent the future of the agency and its commitment to picture stories and reportage.
Grazia Neri’s emphasis on long-term picture stories stems from her personal experience as a journalist in her younger days, but the agency also has as a major component commercial stock as well as celebrity imagery from shooters specialising in spot news. She notes that her agency covers most of the spectrum including a gallery, publications, and exhibition production.
Contrasto has a slightly different profile and has adapted to the digital revolution and pressures from the bigger agencies by diversification. In 2005 Forma, a centre for photography including a school, bookshop, and exhibition space, opened in Milan. Contrasto also has become a major publishing house with noted books by David Goldblatt, William Klein, Josef Koudelka, and Donald McCullin, among others including old European master of the Fifties, Gianni Berengo Gardin who is still in action. Recent exhibitions include works by Sebastio Salgado and Elliott Erwitt. The agency also shares close ties with Magnum and distributes the work of several present and former members of that agency. They are the Italian representatives for Reuters and photo agencies Gamma and Rapho, among others.
Despite an ongoing commitment to exhibitions and publication, Contrasto also represents younger photographers including World Press Photo prize winners Davide Monteleone and Lorenzo Cicconi.
Grazia Neri and Contrasto are true survivors, now respectively forty and twenty years old. Both agencies compete in the domestic and international markets and have a strong stable of photographers across the range of photography from spot news and commercial stock to photo essays from photographers around the world. They have adapted to the radical changes that have affected the trade in differing ways that play to their basic strengths. Of the two agencies, Grazia Neri represents a more flexible and dynamic approach to change with more young photographers in more places, while Contrasto has embraced publication and exhibitions management as its primary survival strategy. They both continue to evolve with changes in technology and market pressures and the quality of their photographers should ensure that they will be around for many more years.
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