Reuters launches yearbook of Canon-shot images
Reuters has just released ‘Our World Now’, the third book produced in partnership with renowned publisher Thames & Hudson, featuring more than 350 images from around the world all taken with Canon cameras.
Published in several languages, ‘Our World Now’ is the first volume in an annual collectors series, and follows the release of two earlier books ‘Sport in the 21st Century’ (2007) and ‘The State of the World’ (2006), the latter selling around 70,000 copies to date.
The books are the fruits of a dedicated Reuters team created five years ago following the appointment of Ayperi Karabuda Ecer, former editor-in-chief at Magnum Photos Paris, to the position of vice president picture business development.
© Nir Elias/Reuters
Tourists photograph each other near a temple at Nanshan Cultural Centre in south China’s Hainan Island province. 26 November 2007.
Karabuda Ecer told CPN: “Reuters is one of the world’s biggest visual content providers and we want to get the maximum value out of that for the viewers, for the business and for those who produce the images. I think the photographers feel very proud [to be in the books] and part of a team. Most agency photographers never see their images used; they send them off and have no means of keeping track of their global usage.”
Reuters works with around 600 photographers around the world and distributes more than half a million pictures each year. “The books are a tribute to our photographers who shoot every day,” said Karabuda Ecer.
Her team at Reuters includes Jassim Ahmad, head of visual projects, and Shannon Gannon, pictures project manager. “One of the challenges was to make sure that you are reflecting all angles, and that the very best photography is shown,” said Ahmad.
Karabuda Ecer stressed that the biggest issues, such conflict in the Middle East, are covered prominently in the new book and would continue to be despite being constant themes. But she added that the solitary photographer working in places such as Kashmir has as much right to be included in the book, along with more light-hearted, “funky”, imagery that often reveals just as much about the world today.
© Goran Tomasevic/Reuters
U.S. soldiers push the car of an Iraqi man to start the engine at a checkpoint in north Baghdad. 13 June 2007.
“You don’t often see Ehud Olmert in his kitchen or the Chechen president dancing,” she said. “But we see these things every day and we just think that it’s an incredible treasure. [By] collecting these books, people will have what we call a ‘memory of the present’.”
Reuters has also teamed up with MediaStorm to produce a multimedia piece commemorating the fifth anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq War. To view the piece, click here.
