by David Walker

The Associated Press and Corbis Images have announced a partnership to distribute each other's images. Customers will have access to a combined collection of more than 10 million news, sports, entertainment, archival and commercial stock images at the web sites of both companies.

The partnership "provides a perfect marriage of choice for our customers,” said Tom Curley, AP president and CEO, in a prepared statement. “It means unprecedented access to the most far-reaching, complete collections available anywhere.”

Details of the deal were undisclosed, but AP Images vice president Fernando Ferre told PDN that the agreement is a "multi-year" contract, and that revenues "will be exchanged based on one party selling the other party's content."

Distribution partnerships among photo agencies and wire services are not new, although they are more often one-way (as opposed to mutual) distribution deals. Corbis distributes the images of VII, which used to have a distribution agreement with AP, for instance, while Getty distributes the images of Agence France-Presse (AFP).

The deals--which are driven by intense competition--enable image providers to reach a broader base of customers with a larger selection of images than they could achieve on their own.