Getting it together with Getty Images

It’s been a real pleasure getting to know Bob Ahern, Director of Archival Imagery at Getty Images. I was happy to see his recent contribution to The Eye of Photography, announcing the distribution partnership between Getty and Conde Nast. We met over a glass of wine during my recent trip to NYC for the AIPAD (The Association of Photography Art Dealers) show. I was delivering a print for the annual Chris Hondros Fund auction (Chris was a Pulitzer nominated Getty photojournalist who died in a government forces mortar attack in Libya in 2011). Bob was delivering Getty’s Year in Focus book for 2015. As he flipped it open to the two page spread featuring Harold’s Cruising’ on Saturday night (1957), he quipped: “Not bad placement–between Bert Stern and Conde Nast!”

I first met Bob last year at the annual APAG (American Photo Archive Group) seminar and he approached me about bringing Harold’s work into the Getty Images Archive. I agreed. For the past 3 months, studio manager, John Benford, has been fast at work key wording and prepping our scanned negs for submission to Getty’s database. It’s a long, slow process, but the folks at Getty have been consistently helpful in guiding us through the process. Two hundred down another thousand to go!

Particular kudos to Bob who oversees the entire archival catalogue and yet still seems to find time to return calls and emails within a day! I’m impressed. While we will continue to license images directly through the studio, we are excited about the amazing reach that Getty Images has and expect to see the money rolling in before too long! (Said with a good degree of hope and humor!) Thanks to the gang at Getty for making it a reasonably seamless process so far!