Northfoto

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Northfoto is a news photo and stock image agency headquartered in Budapest, Hungary.

Northfoto is a supplier of news and stock photography in Central and Eastern Europe, with an online archive of approximately one million images.

Northfoto serves a large base of newspapers, magazines, web portals, television stations, book publishers, and e-media clients in Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Russia, and Ukraine.

Northfoto has sales and distribution offices in Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria, with representative offices in Russia and Ukraine. Northfoto works in partnership with international photo agencies, including Zuma Press, News Corporation, Abaca, Kommersant, and Lapresse.

[edit] History

Northfoto was founded in 2002 by the Mark H. Milstein, an American photojournalist best known for his image Romeo and Juliet in Sarajevo, of two lovers shot dead trying to escape war-torn Sarajevo, Bosnia, in 1993. Milstein is also recognized as a pioneer in digital photography in Central and Eastern Europe; having also founded Red Dot, the region's first web-based photo agency, in 1999

Milstein's efforts to first popularize and then successfully commercialize the web as a means to distribute news and stock photography in Eastern Europe played a significant role in the rapid growth of Western-style print media in the years following the collapse of Communism. Without access to readily available news and stock photography, free of government interference, regional media giants such as Ringier AG, Sanoma WSOY, Group Edipresse, and Axel Springer AG, would have faced greater difficulty in successfully setting up their operations in the newly opened markets of Central and Eastern Europe.

Before the founding of Red Dot, and later Northfoto, domestic media in much of Eastern Europe had only limited access to independent news photography --- like that provided by Reuters or Associated Press. Those news outlets who could afford such services, and were granted the right to lease a telephone line, (most likely coming from Vienna, Austria) were small in number.

Under Communism the vast majority of print media were forced to acquire their photos from the state, i.e., the ministry of information and their politically controlled news gathering agencies.

[edit] Competition

Northfoto has dozens of local and global competitors, such as Guliver, a leading Romanian-based news and stock image agency, Photoland, a Romanian-based stock image agency, East News, a Polish-based news and stock image agency, as well as Getty and Corbis, two of the world's leading news and stock imaging companies.