News
Aurora Photos founds Select, a new assignment agency in NYC
Jose Azel, founder of Aurora Photos in Portland, Maine, has announced the opening of a new assignment agency called Select. David Laidler, who has extensive experience in editorial stock photography, will manage the agency out of offices in New York City. According to Azel, though the agency has its roots in the editorial business, they will work with both commercial and editorial clients.
“Our history and tradition is editorial, specifically editorial story telling,” Azel says. “Aurora Photos represents the archives of dozens of established photojournalist who know how to construct visual stories across a broad spectrum of subjects. They regularly work for the best magazines in the world, GEO-Germany, National Geographic, Time, Paris-Match and so on. This diverse and multi-dimensional skill translates to the corporate and advertising world, especially with the oncoming demands of a visual medium like the Internet and the richness it can provide for story telling. Advertising messages will get more complex and corporate "stories" will need to be told in new and interesting ways. These are the skills already mastered by Select photographers.”
Azel founded Aurora Photos in 1993 and went on to develop the Independent Photographers Network (IPN) which VNU, the owners of “Photo District News,” purchased and continues to manage. He has founded Select in response to the needs of his clients at Aurora. “The commercial and advertising world needs story telling, but they are also asking for real photos. Aurora photographers in general, and Select photographers specifically, excel at making photos look real. Our photographers are a community of people who are journalists with cameras, individuals that explore the world and relay through their images the information they gathered and the experiences of themselves and others.”
Azel has found an able manager in Laidler who, among other positions, has most recently served as Director of Photography, Editorial and Photo Assignments at Getty Images and previously as Executive News Editor at Corbis. “It's very exciting to be representing such a talented group of photographers, all very diverse but all great story tellers,” Laidler said. The initial list of photographers Select will represent come mostly from Aurora’s roster. Azel says the agency will continue to grow the core group with the addition of photographers not currently with Aurora. The initial list of Select photographers includes:
• Bridget Besaw
• Jay Clendenin
• Andy Cutraro
• Katja Heinemann
• Todd Korol
• John Lee
• Jon Lowenstein
• Vince Musi
Click here to see portfolios of the Aurora Select photographers.
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