Colorsport Images Ltd is a sports photographic archive and agency, containing around 10 million images covering almost 150 years of sport, serving all forms of media outlets. The Colorsport partnership was set up in the late 1960s by
photographers
A photographer (the Greek φῶς (''phos''), meaning "light", and γραφή (''graphê''), meaning "drawing, writing", together meaning "drawing with light") is a person who makes photographs.
Duties and types of photographers
As in other ...
Colin Elsey and Stewart Fraser, and they were soon joined by Andrew Cowie.
The agency – as its name suggests - was among the earliest to cover sport in colour as well as black and white, especially
football
Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...
,
rugby union
Rugby union, commonly known simply as rugby, is a close-contact team sport that originated at Rugby School in the first half of the 19th century. One of the two codes of rugby football, it is based on running with the ball in hand. In its m ...
and the
Olympics
The modern Olympic Games or Olympics (french: link=no, Jeux olympiques) are the leading international sporting events featuring summer and winter sports competitions in which thousands of athletes from around the world participate in a var ...
.
History
The business was established in the late 1960s when two sports photographers, Colin Elsey and Stewart Fraser, started to work together. They were initially based in Kings Cross before the business became established at St Peter’s Street in
Islington
Islington () is a district in the north of Greater London, England, and part of the London Borough of Islington. It is a mainly residential district of Inner London, extending from Islington's High Street to Highbury Fields, encompassing the ar ...
for many years as it continued to expand. During that time Colorsport was the official photographer for the
Rugby Football Union
The Rugby Football Union (RFU) is the Sports governing body, national governing body for rugby union in England. It was founded in 1871, and was the sport's international governing body prior to the formation of what is now known as World Rugby ...
and
Arsenal Football Club
Arsenal Football Club, commonly referred to as Arsenal, is a professional football club based in Islington, London, England. Arsenal plays in the Premier League, the top flight of English football. The club has won 13 league titles (inclu ...
, as well as many sporting publications.
In 2003 the business, which had moved to Crouch End, lost
Colin Elsey who died suddenly. At around the same time Stewart Fraser retired.
Colorsport gained new owners in late 2005, notably Nigel Wray, the owner of Saracens rugby club, and David Norrie, a former editor of
Rugby World
''Rugby World'' is a monthly rugby union magazine running since October 1960. It is published monthly by Future plc and edited by Owain Jones who took over from long-standing editor Paul Morgan in January 2012. Paul Morgan was long considered a ...
magazine and cricket and rugby correspondent of the
News of the World
The ''News of the World'' was a weekly national Tabloid journalism#Red tops, red top Tabloid (newspaper format), tabloid newspaper published every Sunday in the United Kingdom from 1843 to 2011. It was at one time the world's highest-selling En ...
, who became chairman. The business was moved to extensive new head offices in Surrey.
Andrew Cowie, who joined the business in 1972, is still active as a sports photographer and also now heads up Colorsport's library operations.
James Pinniger joined as Chief Executive at the start of 2009 from
Reuters
Reuters ( ) is a news agency owned by Thomson Reuters Corporation. It employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide. Reuters is one of the largest news agencies in the world.
The agency was estab ...
. Since that time Colorsport has revamped their online presence and developed a network of international partners. Colorsport photographers were nominated in two categories at the 2012 SJA British Sport Photography Awards, while Cowie's shot of
Tony Woodcock's try for the
All Blacks
The New Zealand national rugby union team, commonly known as the All Blacks ( mi, Ōpango), represents New Zealand in men's international rugby union, which is considered the country's national sport. The team won the Rugby World Cup in 1987 ...
in the
2011 Rugby World Cup Final
The 2011 Rugby World Cup Final was a rugby union match between France and New Zealand, to determine the winner of the 2011 Rugby World Cup. The match took place on 23 October 2011 at Eden Park, in Auckland, New Zealand. New Zealand won the match 8 ...
was voted the Sports Picture of the Year at the 2012 NAPA Awards.
The Archive
Colorsport Images has acquired a number of older photo archives, principally the Albert Wilkes Collection, The Provincial Press Archive, and the Barrett Collection.
Colorsport has
digitised these collections, enabling online distribution. They now operate a large
commercial website which allows clients to search and browse for images, purchase usage rights and download images, in addition to a separate website that enables selected images from the archive to be ordered as consumer prints.
The Wilkes Collection, which contains many thousands of glass plates (mainly football and cricket), had been set up in the 1890s by
Albert Wilkes
Albert Wilkes (6 September 1875 – 9 December 1936) was an English sports photographer and footballer in the early years of professional football in England, who played for Aston Villa from August 1898 to July 1907. Before playing for Villa he ...
, who played football for Aston Villa and England. Wilkes, and later his son, ran the business from West Bromwich for over sixty years.
Provincial Press had been based in Southport from the 1940s through to the 1970s, covering many FA Cup Finals, including the 1953
Matthews Final
The 1953 FA Cup Final, also known as the Matthews Final, was the eighth to be held at Wembley Stadium after the Second World War. The football match was contested between Blackpool and Bolton Wanderers, with Blackpool winning 4–3, equalling the ...
, as well as having contracts with Manchester United, Liverpool, Chelsea, Newcastle United and Arsenal football clubs among others.
Photographers
Colin Elsey’s reputation as one of rugby union's leading photographer was established with his work on the all-conquering
1974 British Lions tour to South Africa
In 1974, the British & Irish Lions toured South Africa, with matches in South West Africa and Rhodesia. Under the leadership of Willie John McBride, the Lions went through the tour undefeated, winning 21 of their 22 matches and being held to a ...
and confirmed on the
next Lions tour to New Zealand three years later when he took the iconic “Mudman” image of Fran Cotton peering out of the Wellington mud, considered by many to be among the greatest rugby photos ever taken.
Stewart Fraser, a winner of the 1967 World Press Photo sports award, became a specialist in covering winter and summer
Olympic
Olympic or Olympics may refer to
Sports
Competitions
* Olympic Games, international multi-sport event held since 1896
** Summer Olympic Games
** Winter Olympic Games
* Ancient Olympic Games, ancient multi-sport event held in Olympia, Greece b ...
sports.
Andrew Cowie took up the mantle as Colorsport's soccer specialist - in 2010 in South Africa he covered his eighth World Cup for the company.
Several other distinguished photographers learnt their trade and came through the Colorsport ranks, such as Stuart McFarlane and Matthew Impey.
Current Colorsport photographers include Dan Rowley, Ian MacNicol,
and Shaun Boggust.
External links
Colorsport ImagesColorsport Print SalesColorsport on TwitterColorsport Archive Reaches 300k
References
{{Reflist, 2
Photo archives in the United Kingdom
Companies based in Surrey