The Hidden History of Stock Photography

The term “stock photo” typically conjures a series of pejorative modifiers: “cliché,” “flat,” “mass produced.” A child about to blow on a dandelion. A slice of pie bleeding onto a plate. A happy family that somehow resembles everybody’s family and nobody’s family, especially if that family happens to be White.

In the digital age, the stock photo is arguably the Rolodex of the imagination; what we repeatedly see and internalize over thousands of hours of screen time shapes what we expect to see in the real world, which means that racial representation in the most banal “stock” imagery can prove especially insidious. In her first book, Stock Photo (2026), Simona Supekar writes, “These sometimes inscrutable photos act as ciphers to clue us in to ourselves even as we are becoming ourselves. They can allow us to see what we value, and what we do not.”

Cover of Stock Photo (Bloomsbury, 2026) by Simona Supekar (image courtesy Bloomsbury)

The latest in Bloomsbury’s Object Lessons series (of which my book on lipstick is a part), Stock Photo explores the disquieting ways in which popular racial hierarchies are often unwittingly perpetuated by stock photography online, images which now inform AI-generated representations of marginalized communities. “A stock search for ‘maternity’ and ‘Indian’ on one site yields a first page of mostly AI-generated results,” Supekar writes, “signifying that these filled a gap for something that did not exist in the first place.” Early digital image banks that reinforce racist and sexist stereotypes have served as the visual backdrop to almost all public discourse online, including memes. Photos of light-skinned Indian people, she writes, are vastly over-represented in Getty’s massive image collection. In another example, she explains that the search for “Black businessman” could, for many years, disturbingly yield “an image of a Black man sitting at a bar next to lines of cocaine.”

Stock Photo mingles such researched analysis with Supekar’s own history. A second-generation South Asian American and now professor of English at Pasadena City College, Supekar had an earlier career professionally keywording stock images in the aughts. In one image included in the book, the author poses in a stock photo that briefly appeared on Yahoo’s homepage, captioned “New Hotspots for Highly Educated Twenty-Somethings.” In the photo, Supekar’s bespectacled young face beams above a laptop that isn’t even on.

Sample of results from a search for "family" on Unsplash's respository of free stock images (screenshot Hyperallergic)

Citing scholar Lisa Nakamura’s theory of “cybertypes,” which refers to how online culture flattens and typecasts minoritized people and communities, Supekar muses on whether her own work in the industry played “a role in creating cybertypes of communities of color, LGBTQ+ folks, those with disabilities, and religious minorities.” At the same time, she reflects on her old job fondly, she worked in a loft-style, open-access office space filled with a fairly ragtag group largely comprised of women of color.

Perhaps most surprising about Stock Photo is how capably Supekar connects her “object lesson” to the legacy of images that will someday be inherited by future generations, whether it’s her own biracial kids or the children of Palestine, of whom a stock portrait tenderly closes the book. “What technology can we invent,” she asks, “to change the perspectives of the so many humans amongst us who do not find human those who are?”

Stock Photo (2026) by Simona Supekar is published by Bloomsbury Academic and available online and through independent booksellers.