Rex Features

Rex Features Ltd. is a British photographic press agency and photo library, based in London, UK. It supplies a daily service of news, celebrity, features, and stock photos to newspapers, magazines, TV, book publishing, web and all other media in the UK and in more than 35 countries worldwide.

Rex Features Ltd -- Company profile

Rex was founded in 1954 by husband-and-wife team Frank Selby (b. Salusinszky Ferenc, Budapest, Jan 12, 1918) and Elizabeth Selby (b. Elisabeth Guttmann, Berlin, Apr 1, 1925). The couple retired as joint Managing Directors in 2008, but continue to take an interest in the firm.

In addition to a daily news and entertainment feed, relied upon by newspapers and magazines worldwide, the Press Agency produces a constant stream of new features, comprising ready-made packages of pictures and words, on an extremely wide range of topics, as well as lifestyle, travel, wildlife and other creative and stock imagery.

REX represents many major picture sources including the leading UK celeb-society photographers Richard Young and Dave Fisher, the French agency Sipa Press, top US celebrity agency Startraks and Berliner, film stills archives The Everett Collection and Snap Photo Library, The Associated Newspapers archive (Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, Evening Standard), television stills libraries including the ITV Archive and the Fremantle Media TV archive, many ITV “reality” and talent shows such as Britain’s Got Talent, Dancing On Ice, The X Factor, I’m A Celebrity - Get Me Out Of Here, plus hundreds of freelance photographers and agencies around the world. Rex’s website allows professional users access to more than 5,000,000 images, with more than 3000 new images added every day. While its daily production is fully digital, Rex’s service is backed by a physical archive stretching back to the early days of photography and containing about 15 million images encompassing a vast range of subjects.

Origins and early years

Both Frank and Elizabeth are from Hungarian roots, and journalism ran in both families—Frank's father Imre Salusinszky was editor-in-chief of Az Est, Hungary's leading newspaper group based in Budapest, while Elizabeth's father, Heinrich (Henry) Guttmann, was a prominent journalist and book author writing on industry and other topics for German newspapers and magazines. His particular personal interest was in the history of photography. To illustrate his articles, Guttmann amassed a large collection of photographs, illustrations and engravings which was later acquired by the groundbreaking Picture Post magazine to form the nucleus of its own picture library; some of a subsequent collection is now contained in the Rex Features picture library. Guttmann, a Jew and a communist sympathiser, realising the threat posed by the rise of the Nazis, left Germany in 1925 with his baby daughter, for Paris where he continued working until 1931. After a brief return to Germany to tidy up his affairs, he settled in London.

Frank travelled to Britain in 1938 to study at Cambridge, but WWII interrupted his plans and he served in the British Army for the duration of the war. After demobilization he went into the import-export business. The teenage Elizabeth had meanwhile been working for the Free French resistance organization at its HQ in London. After the war she began helping her father to "package" his feature articles, trading as Rex Features, and after she and Frank married in 1948 they merged their respective skills to establish Rex as a full-fledged photo agency.

In early 1954 the couple were asked by a small Paris news agency to sell its pictures in the UK, and so Rex Features as an international agency was born. Elizabeth ran the business in the front room of the family house in northwest London, while Frank went out to sell to the newspapers and magazines whose offices were then still concentrated in and around Fleet Street in central London. Word of Rex’s efficient and reliable service quickly spread; by the 1960s, Rex represented a growing roster of photographers including the renowned showbiz photographer Dezo Hoffmann, and was providing a regular supply of features, news and celebrity pictures to the press in Britain and overseas.

Middle period – near disaster and a growth spurt

In 1963 the firm opened its first modest rented offices in a garret overlooking London’s central fruit and vegetable market in Covent Garden. Later there was a move to Gough Square, just off Fleet Street, and again to nearby East Harding Street where in February 1979 a small fire started by an electrical fault caused extensive smoke damage to the company’s stock and equipment. Despite rumours in the press industry that Rex was “finished”, the company continued doing business as usual during the nine months it took to hand-clean or replace many thousands of filing envelopes, millions of B/W prints and colour slides, and other equipment and documents. In November 1979 the company moved into offices in Vine Hill.

In 1981 Rex raised its profile dramatically with its coverage of the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer. Its fast and comprehensive service beat many more widely known agencies into the pages of newspapers and magazines around the world. Picture editors came to rely on Rex for deadline material of all types, particularly of Royalty and celebrities, as well as for its multi-faceted photo library.

Later success and present-day prominence

Rex has notched up many celebrity and news exclusives over the years, including such high-profile hits as: Liz Taylor and Richard Burton smooching at his 50th birthday party; the first picture of Prince Charles holding hands with Camilla Parker Bowles; the first pictures of Mick Jagger together with Luciana Morad and their son Lucas; world exclusive pictures of Hitler’s deputy Rudolf Hess in his coffin; coverage of the world’s first arm transplant operation; pictures transmitted back from Mt. Everest of the discovery of the mummified remains of mountaineer George Mallory; photos of a baby’s corpse dumped in a street gutter in a Chinese city, which caused an international outcry.

In 2008 Rex Features acquired the prestigious Los Angeles-based Berliner Group of photographic companies, with the aim of strengthening Rex’s presence in the USA and guaranteeing a reliable supply of high-quality celebrity portraiture and coverage of “red carpet” events from the US.

Over the past 57 years Rex Features has established itself as one of the leading sources of editorial photography, with contributors and sales agents throughout the world. Its website is frequently cited^{[citation needed]} by leading newspaper and magazine editors as “the best in the business” for clarity and ease of use. The company now owns a substantial building in London's historic Clerkenwell district, where it employs around 80 staff looking after the interests of its hundreds of photographers and many thousands of clients.^{[citation needed]} Rex also has offices in New York and Los Angeles.

On Monday 26 April 2010, Mike Selby of Rex Features announced Getty Images' intention to acquire the Rex group of companies.^{[citation needed]} Following a decision by the OFT (Office of Fair Trading) on Thursday 8 July 2010, to refer the proposed merger to the Competition Commission (formerly Monopolies Commission) for further scrutiny, after some UK media companies expressed fears that since Rex is the market leader in the UK the merged entity could be unfairly influential in the market, the deal was called off, and Rex Features continues as an independent company.

Collections

(Owned)

Dezo Hoffmann Archive

Pic Photos (Harry Myers) library

(Represented)

Richard Young archive

External links

• Official website of Rex Features Ltd
• Official website of Rex USA