Gettyimages

Getty Images Holdings, Inc. is an American visual media company and is a supplier of stock images, editorial photography, video and music for business and consumers, with a library of over 477 million assets. It targets three markets— creative professionals (advertising and graphic design), the media (print and online publishing), and corporate (in-house design, marketing and communication departments).

Getty Images has distribution offices around the world and capitalizes on the Internet for distribution with over 2.3 billion searches annually on its sites. As Getty Images has acquired other older photo agencies and archives, it has digitised their collections, enabling online distribution. Getty Images operates a large commercial website that clients use to search and browse for images, purchase usage rights, and download images. Image prices vary according to resolution and type of rights. The company also offers custom photo services for corporate clients.

History

In 1995, Mark Getty and chief executive officer Jonathan Klein co-founded Getty Investments LLC in London. Mark Getty is the company's chairman. In September 1997, Getty Communications, as it was called at the time, merged with PhotoDisc, Inc. to form Getty Images. The company relocated to Seattle two years later and expanded in the United States, reaching 2,000 employees by 2006. In April 2003, Getty Images entered into a partnership with Agence France-Presse (AFP) to market each other's images.

Getty Images acquired the Michael Ochs Archives in February 2007. The Michael Ochs Archives were described by ''The New York Times'' as "the premier source of musician photography in the world".

In 2008, the private equity firm Hellman & Friedman (H&F) acquired Getty Images for $2.4 billion. In 2012, H&F put Getty up for sale. As of the ensuing sale to Carlyle Group, the company was said to have an archive that included 80 million stills and illustrations."Carlyle in $3.3 Billion Deal for Getty Images"
''New York Times'' Dealbook, 15 August 2012. Retrieved 15 August 2012. The company was acquired by the Getty family in 2018.

The company moved to its current headquarters, in the Union Station office complex in Seattle's International District, in 2011.

In 2015, Jonathan Klein became the company's chairman and Dawn Airey was hired as chief executive officer (CEO) of Getty Images. Airey remained in the role until 31 December 2018, at which time she became a non-executive director member of its board and Craig Peters was appointed CEO.

In 2019, Getty Images introduced Market Freeze, simplifying exclusivity of rights-managed images. Later that year, it announced that due to customers' needs changing, it plans to phase out rights-managed imagery by 2020 in favor of royalty-free images.

In December 2021, Getty Images announced its intention to become publicly traded once more through combination with CC Neuberger Principal Holdings II. In July 2022, the SPAC merger completed and the newly formed parent company of Getty Images went public on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol GETY.

Acquisitions

Since its formation, Getty Images has pursued an aggressive programme of acquisition, buying up many privately owned agencies that had built up the stock photography industry, from small family-run firms to larger agencies. By 1999, it had acquired one of the largest agencies, Tony Stone Images; the online art seller Art.com; the sports photography agency Allsport; the market leader in the Benelux and Scandinavia: Word View (1996, from Mr. Bert Blokhuis, four offices, for undisclosed sum); journalistic specialists Liaison Agency; Newsmakers, the first digital news photo agency; Online USA, a specialist in celebrity shots; and the Hulton Press Library, the former archive of the British photojournalistic magazine ''Picture Post''. The Hulton collection was sold by the BBC
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