Historical and archive picture research

If you publish documentary, book or heritage work, you need images from decades that no stock feed covers, and a clear answer on what you may print, where, and in what print run. A caption date is not enough when a picture goes into a hardback, a reprint or a broadcast. Fast Media is built for that kind of work: one library for everything an organisation publishes, with rights, territory and print-run clarity attached to each licence rather than left to be sorted out later.

Fast Media searches specialist archives such as Avalon, Belga, Robert Harding, Heritage and Universal Images Group alongside editorial wire and creative stock from one desk, so a decade-and-subject search runs across every source at once. Around 27 archives and collections are reachable this way, through our supplier integrations and independent of any one agency. Instead of opening six accounts and comparing six sets of results, a researcher runs one query on period, subject and region and reviews everything side by side.

Your own scanned or previously licensed material sits in the same grid as everything else, so a researcher sees what the organisation already owns before licensing anything again. Departmental scans, commissioned photography and images cleared for an earlier title stay findable in team libraries rather than on a drive someone left behind. For a heritage publisher with a long backlist, that is the difference between a fresh licence and a file you paid for two books ago.

When a search needs human hands, our team does the picture research for you. We work from your brief, covering period, subject, region and format, and return a shortlist in a project you can share with editors and authors by link. Projects, team libraries and share links keep the shortlist moving between researcher, editor and author without attachments or version confusion. You review, comment and select, and only the images you choose go on to licensing.

Every licence states rights, territory and print run, and every download comes with a licence certificate you can file with the book or programme. Clearance of historical material depends on each archive's terms, so we tell you what the supplying archive grants for your specific use rather than making promises on their behalf. If a use falls outside what an archive offers, you hear that before the page goes to print, not after.

Quotes, POs and EUR VAT invoices come from an EU supplier in Amsterdam, so procurement and finance get paperwork in the form they expect. Plans, seats, teams and groups cover a whole editorial or production department, and activity reporting shows what was searched, licensed and downloaded across titles and productions. Renewals are handled in the same place. One library, one supplier relationship, one invoice line for everything your imprint or production house publishes.

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