The Virtual Picture Desk, founded in 2000 by former Getty Images vice president and Corbis director George Sinclair, has expanded its roster of clients with several exclusive agreements. As opposed to producing or licensing content, VPD specializes in managing the distribution of its clients’ image collections, including those of De Agostini, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Discovery Channel Images and Hemis.
New VPD clients include collections that specialize in social, ethnic or diverse content. Gallo Images’ ethnic royalty-free brand Roots depicts African and Middle Eastern people. Real Latino Images offers royalty-free content originally developed by a major Hispanic advertising group. Nativestock Pictures focuses on rights-managed imagery of the North American Indian, including artifacts, traditional culture and dress. The rights-managed collection of Photofusion covers social and environmental life, including diverse and ethnic groups, in the U.K.
VPD edits its clients’ collections and arranges their placement with both global and specialized or local distributors. For example, exclusive Nativestock images will be distributed by Corbis and Getty Images, while other content will be represented by specialty agencies, such as Learning Pictures, which will also represent the several thousand of Photofusion images best suited for the U.S. textbook market.