A call to all stock image banks

Lets pay image creators at their fair value, to preserve the future

HOsiHO aerial image bank is calling for action to save the professionnal industry's players

In these difficult times for the creative world, HOsiHO aerial image bank is calling on all its fellow stock image libraries in order to prevent the announced end of an industry severely affected by the health crisis and an endless race to the bottom.

Why a Call to all Image Banks ?

A precarious and alarming situation for professionnal artists: the entire artistic creation sector is being hit hard by the containment and by the fall in assignments for all artistic professions.

More than ever, being an independent professionnal artist in 2020 has become eminently precarious. Some have already thrown in the towel, while others are resisting as best they can. The risk is great to see the professionals giving up any activity and image banks will therefore only have to offer amateur or semi-professional work.

And yet, in a world saturated with images of all kinds, what would we do without those who produce them?

Do we really want to only distribute artworks produced by non-professionals?

 

We think that we, image banks, can take action and that it is possible to bring willing answers, otherwise it is to be feared that the professionnal stock and archive image industry will be condemned in the near future.

Within our corporation, a broad movement of solidarity must be set up quickly, so as not to run the risk of seeing more and more professional artists leave this noble profession following the fatal blow dealt by the global health crisis we are going through.

What do we suggest to do?

We call on all the concerned stock image libraries to increase the value of the share paid to the contributors, and to stop the continuous fall of prices, both for photos and videos.

It is up to each agency to decide, to the extent of its economic capacity.

Appel Bank - Fair Value - UK

Paying image creators at their fair value, to preserve the future

The pandemic is not the only cause. Long before it, the frenzied race to the bottom has dramatically reduced the income of independent photographers and videographers, while the share paid to authors has been constantly cut back over the last ten years or so.But the pandemic is not the only cause.

Today, very few image banks pay a fair commission of 50% to their contributors.

15, 20 or 30% have become the standard.

This share is unfair and totally insufficient to allow professionnal creators to make a living from their image production, especially in a context of increasingly low sales prices, often aggravated by almost permanent discounts.

On the eve of Black-Friday, HOsiHO therefore invites all agencies - small, medium and global - to take into consideration the great precariousness of visual creators and suggests to raise the share of rights paid to the artists they represent, and then to increase the price of the photos and videos they sell. 

It is a question of equity, balance and survival for the entire profession.

How do we support HOsiHO contributors ?

HOsiHO will support its call with a symbolic help, by giving its contributors 80% of the amount of the sales made during the month of December 2020 (instead of the usual 50%). December being, for the agency, one of the best months of the year in terms of sales.

« An image bank is nothing without the images that its producers are willing to entrust to it », say Sami Sarkis, HOsiHO's founder, in the agency's Manifesto  « I founded HOsiHO agency so that artists can make a decent living from their art and so that buyers can easily find, at a fair price, the aerial, legally shot and high quality images they require. »

This is why the HOsiHO image bank never shuts down its prices, nor participates in the delirious Black Friday discounts, limiting itself to occasional promotions never exceeding 20% off, and keeps applying a flexible price structure according to the purchased use and format, refusing any low-cost strategy likely to devalue the quality, the originality and sustainability of its artits's work.

Obviously, there is an interdependence between creators, buyers and middlemen, all of whom ultimately have the same interest: maintaining a level of income that allows artists to continue to create and agencies to offer new and original images to buyers who are ever more demanding and in search of fresh images.

Thus, «better compensation for image creators means above all ensuring the future of the entire industry. So what are we waiting for? », asks Sami Sarkis, who has been an image maker for 35 years.


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HOsiHO, a INA Partner Collection

Within the partnership between the INA and the HOsiHO agency, the collection of aerial images is also distributed by the french National Institute of Audiovisual (INA)

HOsiHO thus joins the prestigious partner collections presented on the professional platform inamediapro. A very positive acknowledgement for the agency.


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