Visa founder lambasts agencies

摘要

Jean-Franoois Leroy, founder and director of Visa pour I'lmage, an annual festival dedicated to contemporary photojournalism, has attacked photo agencies for 'digging the profession's grave' by offering the media heavily discounted subscription schemes.An arch-critic of newspapers' reluctance to publish or commission journalistic photo-essays, he claims discounting is only making the situation worse for photographers, who he says are finding the industry increasingly unsustainable.'Many agencies now have flat-rate schemes offering attractive prospects for magazines and newspapers run by people whose only goal is profit,' says Leroy. 'By offering these subscription schemes, they are digging this profession's tomb. We scarcely need to cite the case of picture desks of magazines with the same profit-driven management demands, and which use amateur photo websites, paying one or two euros a shot.'