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The New York Times has partnered with Redux Pictures on a deal that will allow the agency to syndicate the newspaper’s photos to the domestic editorial market.

It is the first time The New York Times has contracted with an outside company to handle picture resale, and it comes two years after the Times instituted new contracts giving it joint copyright on photos taken by freelancers.

Redux, a three-year-old agency based in New York, has its own photographers and syndicates photos from several international partners, including Laif in Germany and Contrasto in Italy. This is the agency’s first newspaper partner.

The deal was confirmed Thursday by Redux founder and principal Marcel Saba.

“We have signed a licensing agreement to syndicate the content of The New York Times domestically,” he said. “They’ve never done this with anybody before.”

When asked why the Times chose the boutique Redux over bigger competitors like Getty Images, Saba said his company offers the expertise and knowledge to market images to magazine and book publishers.

“You’d have to ask them why they chose us but I think they were looking for a high-end agency that could deal with integrity and put their images in the right places and get them some extra sales,” Saba said.

Representatives of The New York Times could not be reached in time for comment.

The resale market for newspaper photography is not huge, but occasional exclusives can net sales in the five-figure range. The Times has quietly been handling photo requests in-house through its nytimesagency.com website.

Saba said that would continue for a couple of weeks during a period of transition, but he said that all phone calls and e-mails requesting photos would eventually be re-routed to the Redux office.

The Times has several award-winning photographers on staff, and swept the Pulitzer Prizes for photography in 2002 for its coverage of the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the war in Afghanistan.