Journalist who carries a camera as if it were a pen

In the small, highly competitive world of photo-journalism, 72 year-old Goksin Sipahioglu, founder of one of the world's largest photo agencies, is a legend. Describing a retrospective of Sipa hioglu's 1950s and 1960s news photos at the Perpignan festival earlier this month, Le Monde called him "the journalist who carries a camera as if it were a pen".

The list of "Monsieur Sipa's" scoops is long, so I asked him which he is most proud of. "The Cuban missile crisis," he says immediately, pulling an album of 1962 clippings from a desk drawer. Sipahioglu, who is Turkish, was the only journalist who got through the US blockade, pretending to be a sailor on a Turkish ship carrying wheat. He sold exclusive rights to his story to the Associated Press agency for $500, under the mistaken impression they were offering $50,000. His revelation that Soviet missiles had not been pulled out featured on the front pages of 45 US newspapers.

In 1969, Mr Sipahioglu and his American companion, Phyllis Springer, founded Sipa Press in a studio apartment where he developed photos in the bathroom. Today, Sipa employs 500 photographers and has an annual turnover of £12.8 million. "Unfortunately it's true," Mr Sipahioglu laughs when I ask him whether he used to empty coins from the coffee machine to pay photographers.

Dozens of statuettes on a table in Mr Sipahioglu's cavernous office have been given as tributes from "his" photographers - their photo awards. When a Sipa photographer, Alfred Yaghobzadeh, was wounded in Chechnya in 1995, Mr Sipahioglu hired a private plane at his own expense to go and fetch him. Another Sipa photographer, Nikola Arsov, was strip-searched and held by French police for following Princess Diana's car on the night of her death in 1997. When Arsov was released 48 hours later, Mr Sipahioglu was there to greet him with a bear-hug.

Although the "Pont de l'Alma Ten" were cleared of criminal charges this month, photographers are finding it difficult to shake off the negative image. Partly in reaction to Princess Diana's death, the French Justice Minister, Mrs Elisabeth Guigou, has now drafted a law which would ban the publication of photos showing the victims of crimes "whose dignity is affected" by the pictures, or images of hand-cuffed suspects. The "loi Guigou" has raised an outcry among photographers and print media.

"Already, France has more restrictions on photographers than any other country," Mr Sipahioglu says. "This is total hypocrisy." It is the authorities who violate the presumption of innocence by hand-cuffing all suspects - not the photographers, he says.

Victims of a Paris metro bombing say they were traumatised to see photos of themselves, wounded, in the newspapers.

Mr Sipahioglu says the bombings - not the photos - are degrading and a horror, and that the public has a right to know what happens. "There is no reason to ban photographing misery at home - but not on the other side of the world."

As the debate continues, more French people are suing photographers for violating their "right" to their own image - even in public places. The TV newsreader Claire Chazal seeks damages from Paris Match for publishing a photo of her at the Cannes film festival. World Cup spectators whose faces were shown in the stadium now demand payment.

Even the owners of a volcano in Auvergne are suing a man who photographed their property from a helicopter.

But despite ever more difficult conditions in France, Mr Sipa hioglu shows no signs of discouragement, or of retiring.

He spends seven days a week in his office and never takes a vacation. The only weaknesses he admits to are women and twice-daily meals in Parisian restaurants.

This year, Mr Sipahioglu gained a new reputation as "the man who said `no' to Bill Gates," Microsoft owner and the world's richest man. Mr Gates has set up his own photo agency, Corbis, which digitalises photographs and sells them on the Internet.

In June, Corbis purchased one of Sipa's rivals, Sygma, but only after they were rejected by Mr Sipahioglu.

After a long lunch at La Cascade - where "Monsieur Sipa" drank wine and the Corbis executives Coca-Cola - the photo-journalist sent them packing.

"They would have changed the name," he explains. "After a year or two they would have fired me. If I didn't have Sipa, what would I do?"