Keystone (picture agency)

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Keystone AG

logo
legal form Public company (since 1979)
founding 1953
resolution 1st January 2018
Reason for dissolution Takeover by sda
Seat Zurich
management Jann Jenatsch
Number of employees 77.6 (previous year 75.6; including PPR)
sales 16.9 (previous year 17.5) million CHF
Branch Picture agency , picture archive
Website www.keystone.ch
As of December 31, 2017

Keystone was the largest Swiss photo agency . It was 50% owned by the Swiss news agency SDA and the Austrian news agency APA and held two wholly-owned subsidiaries, PPR Media Relations AG (Public Relations) and EQ Images AG (Sportbilder).

Keystone employed around 77 people, including 20 permanent photographers, as well as numerous freelancers . Keystone obtained the images for international news from partner agencies AP and EPA . Keystone represented other important photo agencies and photographers such as Magnum in Switzerland and worked with historical archives and agencies such as the Swiss Photo Foundation and the Thomas Mann Archive.

In 2017 Keystone achieved sales of around CHF 17 million .

On April 27, 2018, Keystone was taken over retroactively to January 1, 2018 by the sda news agency , which renamed Keystone-SDA . The new multimedia company is to expand its business with non- media customers in particular. The merger took place through an exchange of stakes: APA brought its previous 50% stake in Keystone into the new company and received a 30% stake in Keystone-SDA in return. APA is to become a long-term IT partner of the new company. The CEO is the previous CEO of SDA, Markus Schwab, the editor-in-chief is the previous managing director of Keystone, Jann Jenatsch.

services

Keystone offered around 1200 press images every day via its own data transmission system, as well as images from everyday life in Switzerland, portraits of Swiss personalities and stories in the form of picture stories and reports, as well as an image archive with over 11 million images. The agency's clients are mainly media and advertising agencies . Keystone also took photos on behalf of companies.

Keystone also offered infographics and videos as well as a PR image and video service via its wholly owned subsidiary PPR Media Relations AG (formerly Photopress AG) and a separate sports service via EQ Images AG.

history

Keystone goes back to the American Keystone Press, which was established by the Hungarian émigré Bert Garai (1890–1973) and emerged from the Keystone View Company, founded in 1892, and Press Illustrated Services, which between the world wars became one of the most famous transatlantic photo agencies with a distribution network the big newspaper groups and with branches in many countries. In Switzerland, Lotte Sigg was the first to sell pictures from the Keystone Press branch in Munich to Swiss weekly newspapers such as Schweizer Illustrierte , Sie & Er , Die Woche , Meyers Modeblatt and In free hours , before journalist Max Schneider (1924–1998) 1953 took over the sale and founded the independent sole proprietorship "Keystone-Press, Max Schneider" in Zurich.

This now also offered photos from the Keystone Press branches in Paris and London and from 1954 employed its own photographer in order to be able to offer photos from Switzerland. The photographer Hans-Ulrich Blöchliger (* 1937), who joined the agency in 1956, became the defining figure of Keystone, most recently as editor-in-chief of the agency until his retirement in 2002 .

In Switzerland , the Illustrations- und Photopress AG (renamed Photopress AG in 1997) was the dominant photo agency in Switzerland up until the mid-1970s. It was founded in 1931 by Eugen Suter as the first Swiss photo agency and sold to Jean Frey AG in 1965 . She is the exclusive distributor of AP's international images in Switzerland. It was also served exclusively by the SDA involved in Photopress with their news service. Its strongest competitor was ATP, founded by Arthur Theodor Pfister in 1935, which sold UPI's international images in Switzerland and also owned the image rights of the European Press Photo Union (EPU), a loose association of the most important European agencies such as AFP , dpa , ANSA , PA (Great Britain), Pressens Bild (Sweden), Lehtikuva (Finland), ANP , Belga and Votava (Austria) and predecessor of the EPA founded in 1983. In addition, there were two other, smaller picture agencies in Lausanne, the Press Diffusion founded in 1937 by Joseph Hayot and Actualités Suisses Lausanne (ASL) founded by Roland Schlaefli in 1954. Presse Diffusion merged with ASL in 1973. At that time, “Keystone-Press, Max Schneider” was just a niche agency with images from abroad from the three Keystone Press branches and a few of its own Swiss images.

When ATP was sold to Ringier in 1962, Ringier retained the image rights from UPI and continued the service as Ringier Image Service (RiBiDi). She gave the image rights to EPU to Keystone. It was able to offer more current pictures, but that was not enough to become a serious competitor of Photopress and Ringier. In addition, Keystone lacked a global network, especially for images from the USA. It wasn't until Keystone hired a photographer in Washington with AFP and DPA that the upswing began. Then Max Schneider founded Keystone Press AG in November 1979 and dissolved the sole proprietorship "Keystone-Press, Max Schneider".

Until the end of the eighties there was fierce competition in Switzerland between Photopress, Ringier and Keystone, from which Keystone finally emerged as the winner. Ringier discontinued the picture service in 1974; from then on, its archive was only available to its own editorial offices. (In 1979 Ringier merged it with the other image archives of the group to form Ringier Documentation Image (RDB) and opened it to external customers in 1980; in 2009 Ringier donated the analogue stock to the Canton of Aargau). In 1975, decisive changes were made for the displacement battle between Keystone and Photopress: AP switched to the up-and-coming Keystone, and SDA dissolved the exclusive contract with Photopress and from then on also supplied Keystone. Although Photopress immediately found a replacement for the international images with UPI, which had been without a Swiss partner since the disappearance of ATP, its decline could no longer be stopped. The strategically unsuccessful abandonment of the postal service in 1979, with which Photopress wanted its customers to switch to the transmission network, contributed to this, which turned out to be a mistake. Towards the end of 1980, Keystone and Photopress then surprisingly turned to the publishers and informed them that their prices would be standardized and that the continued existence of two picture agencies would only be possible if the 15 largest Swiss newspapers subscribed to both services. The reaction of the publishers was consistently negative, whereupon Jean Frey AG discontinued the Photopress service at the end of 1980 and sold its shares to Keystone, although initially retained the image archive.

With the disappearance of the Photopress, UPI lost its Swiss partner again. At the beginning of 1981, the Zurich agency Bild + News, founded in 1973 by Balz Röthlin and Felix Widler, two former Photopress employees, jumped into the gap. The combination of UPI and Bild + News, which only offers a postal service, was unable to establish itself as a real competitor to Keystone. UPI's economic difficulties ultimately led to the fact that it had to sell its international photo service to Reuters at the end of 1984 . AP has now asked Keystone to waive the delivery of the EPA and to serve them exclusively, which Keystone refused. AP then terminated the contract with Keystone at the end of 1984 and from then on worked with Bild + News. Keystone was forced to team up with Reuters.

In 1986, AP took over Bild + News from the entrepreneur Felix W. Matthys, who had taken it over in 1985, and himself introduced a Swiss picture service under his own name and with a transmission network. After Keystone's de facto monopoly, which had lasted for six years, this in turn led to a fierce, mutually ruinous price war . Walter Grolimund, CFO of the new owner of Keystone, Felix Westermann, and the new Keystone Chairman of the Board of Directors, lawyer Bruno Baer, ​​subsequently negotiated a cooperation agreement with AP in 1991, which resulted in the closing of the Swiss AP photo service and the renewed cooperation between Keystone and AP instead of Reuters for the international images. Keystones' monopoly on the Swiss press photo market, which was regained as a result, did not last even half a year. Reuters set up its own Swiss service, which, however, was expressly intended as a complementary service and which it offered from February 25, 1991 and expanded from 2006. An unusual concept was chosen for the service, based on a basic offer (for international images) and an image exchange (for Swiss images).

In 1991, Keystone acquired the image archive of the former Photopress, which had previously belonged to Jean Frey, in the estate process of Omni Holding des Financiers Werner K. Rey , to which Jean Frey AG was now part. In 1994, Keystone switched to delivering images to customers using AP's satellite distribution network. In 1997 the agency was renamed from Keystone Press AG to Keystone and in 2009 to Keystone AG, and in the same year acquired the majority of the picture agency EQ Images AG, which specializes in sports images.

Change of ownership

In the eighties, Max Schneider held 88% of the share capital of CHF 300,000 in Keystone AG. The editor-in-chief Blöchliger, to whom Schneider had gradually given the shares as a loyalty bonus or gratuity , held 9% , the rest was held by numerous small shareholders. From 1980, Max Schneider tried to sell his shares individually and wanted to give up the majority by the end of 1987 at the latest. However, Schneider initially insisted that no single shareholder should hold a larger package. This and his asking price of CHF 3.9 million prevented the project from being implemented quickly. The natural candidate for a takeover, the news agency SDA, was only interested in taking over a majority stake , possibly in a consortium with the publishers. Schneider offered a majority of the SDA and the larger publishers in mid-December 1987, but set an unrealistically short period of time for the formation of a consortium agreement. At the end of 1987 he finally sold 73% of the Keystone shares to Felix Westermann, a young entrepreneur who was completely unknown in the media and who operated almost exclusively with outside capital . Its CFO, Walter Grolimund, gradually took over the management as a delegate of the board of directors from December 1990 onwards , after he left the Westermann companies in spring 1991 on a full-time basis.

In 1990 Max Schneider sold half of the remaining 15% of the shares to Grolimund and half to the former Jean Frey general manager Bruno Baer; he was elected President of the Board. In spring 1991, after the bankruptcy of his company, Westermann also sold half of his Keystone share package to Baer and Grolimund, who now each held 44% of the company. In November 1991, the agency decided to increase the capital from CHF 300,000 to CHF 600,000, half of which was also taken over by Baer and Grolimund. In 1994, Blöchliger sold his stake in Baer and the package, which now contained a majority of 53%, immediately via CAT Medien AG to the former director of the Winterthur printing company Thedy Hummel (then owned by Jean Frey) . He was elected Chairman of the Board of Directors as the new majority shareholder.

In 2008, Hummel and Grolimund sold 60% of the Keystone shares to the Austrian news agency APA and the rest, around 38%, to the Swiss news agency SDA . Almost all small shareholders then also sold their shares to SDA. Walter Grolimund became the new president until he left the company in 2012, then Peter Kropsch from APA and after his move to the German Press Agency in 2016, his successor at APA, Clemens Pig . In 2016 SDA acquired the last remaining share from a small shareholder and in June 2016 10% of the share capital from APA. Since then, the photo agency has been owned 50% each by SDA and APA.

Editors-in-chief

  • 1956–2002: Hans-Ulrich Blöchliger (title until the end of 1987: deputy managing director, then editor-in-chief)
  • 2002-2003: Andreas J. Minor
  • 2003–2005: Alessandro della Valle (chief photographer)
  • 2005–2018: Tomas Kadlcik

Chairman of the Board of Directors

literature

  • Rafael Brand, Daniel Landolf: Lock keepers of the flood of images: Image agencies. In: Roger Blum, Katrin Hemmer, Daniel Perrin (eds.): Die AktuelliTäter. News agencies in Switzerland. Verlag Paul Haupt, Bern / Stuttgart / Vienna 1995, ISBN 3-258-05002-3 .
  • Hugo Loetscher: Photography in Switzerland from 1840 to today (= Swiss Foundation for Photography, Swiss Photography Series , Volume 7). Benteli, Bern 1992.
  • Mirco Melone: The ATP Picture Service, 1936–1962. The story of a Swiss press photo agency (free term paper).
  • Mirco Melone: Press photo agencies and circuits in Switzerland. In: July. Kulturmagazin Aargau, No. 7, 2010, p. 40 (PDF; 3.2 MB).
  • Arnold Theodor Pfister: Exposé about the press picture, the general situation of the picture communication for the Swiss press, the reporters and picture agencies, their tasks and their position in the army. 1943.
  • Franz Adam Roedelberger: The sun book from Bündnerland, Valais and Ticino. Association printing, Bern 1957.
  • Hans Rudolf Schmid: The General. Switzerland in the war 1939–1945. Ringier, Zofingen 1974.
  • Dieter Bachmann, Swiss National Museums (ed.): Departure into the present. Switzerland in photographs 1840–1960 / La Suisse en photographies 1840–1960 / La Svizzera in photography 1840–1960. Limmat, Zurich 2009.
  • Elisabeth Breguet: 100 ans de photographie chez les Vaudois. 1839-1939. Payot Lausanne 1981.
  • Dario Donati, François de Capitani, Thomas Bochet (eds.): C'est la vie. Press photos since 1940. Limmat Verlag, Zurich 2012.
  • Swiss National Museum (ed.): Work. Photographs from Switzerland 1860–2015. Limmat Verlag, Zurich 2015.
  • Mario König : "Europe marches against the world enemy". Pictures, agencies, magazines. German photo-propaganda against the Soviet Union and its path to Switzerland, 1941–1945. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . November 26, 1988, p. 89 ff.
  • Frank Marti: Thank you to a lovely colleague. On the death of A. Toto Pfister. In: Fatherland . No. 84, April 13, 1971, p. 29.
  • Mirco Melone: Picture Networks. Cultural techniques of photo archiving and management using the example of the picture collections of the ATP picture service, approx. 1933-2003. Master's thesis in the History Seminar University of Basel, Basel 2011
  • Silvia Scherz: The press photo as a visual history document. Digitization as an opportunity. In: Memoriav. Bulletin, 2003, 10, pp. 18-19.
  • JH Schihin: Toto Pfister in memory. He fought for the sport to be recognized. In: Lucerne latest news . No. 83, April 10, 1971, p. 27.
  • Markus Schürpf: Rare images of an isolated world. An inventory of photographs of home and contract children in Switzerland. Part 1: Reports from magazines and publications 1936–1991, Bern, Netzwerk verdingt. Photo office, Bern 2014.
  • Georg Sütterlin: Pfister, Arnold Theodor. In: Swiss Photo Foundation, Index of Photographers, as of December 2014.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jann Jenatsch is the new CEO. In: persoenlich.com. January 16, 2008.
  2. ↑ a b c Keystone AG / PPR Media Relations AG / EQ Images AG. ( Memento of the original from June 23, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: SDA Annual Report 2015, p. 73 f. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.sda.ch
  3. ↑ a b Keystone: 60 years in the service of photo topicality. In: fotointern.ch. 29th September 2013.
  4. ↑ Our partners. In: Keystone website.
  5. ↑ Jann Jenatsch: Keystone - an image archive as a bridge between the past and the future. In: Lead. Newsletter of the sda ​​group, No. 42, 09-2008 (PDF; 21 kB).
  6. ↑ SDA and Keystone merge. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . April 27, 2018.
  7. ↑ The SDA and Keystone are merging. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung. October 30, 2017.
  8. ↑ About us. In: Keystone website.
  9. ^ Jann Jenatsch: Keystone Assignments. In: Lead. Newsletter of the SDA group, No. 44, 03-2009.
  10. ↑ Lea Friberg: «We have our eyes everywhere». In: persoenlich.com. 19th September 2013.
  11. ↑ Nick Lüthi: Keystone: More than just pictures. In: plain text. May 3, 2010.
  12. ^ Keystone View Company. In: Yellowstone Stereoview website.
  13. ↑ Suter, Eugen. In: FotoCH. Office for the History of Photography, Bern.
  14. ↑ Illustrations- and Photopress AG. In: FotoCH. Office for the History of Photography, Bern.
  15. ^ Pfister, Arnold Theodor. In: FotoCH. Office for the History of Photography, Bern.
  16. ↑ a b story. In: Website of the Canton of Aargau, Department of Education, Culture and Sport.
  17. ↑ Press Diffusion. In: FotoCH. Office for the History of Photography, Bern.
  18. ↑ Schweizerisches Handelsamtsblatt, November 14, 1979, p. 3600.
  19. ↑ Blum et al .: The actual perpetrators. 1995, p. 83 f.
  20. ↑ Ueli Haldimann : How Keystone got the quasi-monopoly in the picture business. In: Tages-Anzeiger . March 6, 1981, p. 57.
  21. ↑ picture and news. In: FotoCH. Office for the History of Photography, Bern.
  22. ↑ Blum et al .: The actual perpetrators. 1995, pp. 84, 92.
  23. ↑ Reuters Switzerland with an expanded Swiss picture service. In: Kleinreport. September 29, 2006.
  24. ^ Keystone AG / Photopress AG / EQ Images GmbH. ( Memento of the original from December 19, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: SDA Annual Report 2009, p. 62. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.sda.ch
  25. ↑ Blum et al .: The actual perpetrators. 1995, p. 85.
  26. ↑ Cold feet. In: plain text. July 10, 2007.
  27. ↑ CAT Group takes over 53 percent of Keystone Press AG. In: sda. October 11, 1994, bsd209.
  28. ↑ APA and SDA buy Keystone. In: persoenlich.com. November 26, 2007.
  29. ↑ APA consolidated balance sheet 2015 with sales growth and stable result. In: APA-OTS original text service. June 10, 2016.