Some of my magazine cover stories. I was one of the founding members of the photo-agency Network Photographers, and the 25 years the agency ran – from 1980 to 2005 – was also the golden age of magazine print journalism.
Many UK newspapers had both Saturday and Sunday magazines, and they were hungry for new material. Stories generally come about in one of two ways – either a commission directly from a magazine – like the KGB for the Sunday Times or Jericho for the Telegraph – or it was from one of our own ideas – like Georgia Civil War for the Independent or Child Brides for the Observer.
If the idea was a good one, then it was often possible to find a magazine that would back your story, even if your first choice turned you down. Almost all colour stories were shot on transparency film, and for a longer assignment of perhaps two weeks you might get through 100 rolls of film. The costs of film and processing, and expenses would be covered by the magazine as well as a day rate for the shoot. Once the films were processed, we would present a carefully edited and captioned set of between 50 and 100 pictures to the magazine picture editor.
At that time there was an understanding that as freelance photographers we would retain the copyright on our work. After the story was published in a UK magazine, Network would syndicate sets of duplicate transparencies through our partner agencies including Rapho in France, Grazia Neri in Italy, Focus in Germany, Transworld in Holland and JB Pictures in the US for sales in their countries.