Stock Photo

by Simona Supekar, Ian Bogost (Series Editor), Christopher Schaberg (Series Editor)

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.

Part memoir, part cultural criticism, Stock Photo mines the significance of the stock photo in our everyday lives, from the ads and websites we browse, to the menus and memes that we consume. Through interviews with stock photography experts, photographers, models, consumers, and other stakeholders, Simona Supekar explores the evolution of the industry by tracing the creation of a stock photo from concept to usage while highlighting significant historical moments.

Supekar weaves in her own experiences as a keyworder for a stock photography company while reckoning with her Asian American/South Asian identity in a post-9/11 world. Stock Photo also addresses how these images have the power to shape our perceptions about race, class/caste, gender, ability, and more, thus underscoring the importance of representation even in something as innocuous as a stock photo.

Genres: Nonfiction

184 pages, Paperback

Published February 19, 2026

Reviews

[Liralen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Let this book be a tale about how when some things are seen, they cannot be unseen. (loc. 96*)

For years, Supekar had a job that I've never so much as considered: she keyworded stock photos. In addition to giving her an inside view of an industry that most of us have probably spent very little time thinking of, it illustrated the way representation matters...and the way representation so often doesn't happen.

I read this because the Object Lessons series is a delight, and the books almost always teach me something...and Stock Photo delivered, because really, I have spent very little time thinking about stock photography. There was a brief moment when the sale of stock photos could make a comfortable living for photographers, but the market has changed, and with AI it is changing again.

(Notes Supekar: The AI site generator I used to create this image asked me to "Select All Pictures of Film Reels" to confirm that I was human. (loc. 182))

AI plays a role in the dialogue here, as well it should, but mostly Supekar's focus is representation: who appears in stock photos, and in what contexts; who is readily findable as a doctor or lawyer or woman laughing alone as salad, and who is represented mostly as a person hitting a piñata or as a drug user or as a terrorist. And alongside that: what landscapes one can readily find, and which cultures' foods, and which keywords are popular when.

Other than representation, what interests me most is the positivity with which Supekar talks about stock photos in general. To the extent that I've thought about them, they mostly read as "stuff I wouldn't want on my walls"—either too much manufactured quirk or too generic, I guess. So it's nice to have the food for thought of what else they can mean, and how they can be useful in so many contexts.

Three and a half stars; not my top ever Object Lessons book (that's still Pregnancy Test), but satisfying.

*Quotes are from an ARC and may not be final.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

[Alex Sarll]

Illustrating everything from memes to the most resolutely bland corporate websites, stock photos are part of the grammar of the modern world. Having been employed for some years tagging them, and even appeared in a few herself*, Supekar is perfectly placed to talk us through how this works in both theoretical and practical terms, putting names to some familiar faces and answering questions I hadn't even thought to ask about how the system operates and, more than that, how it used to operate before everything was a click away. She is also well-placed to talk about the sometimes faltering efforts to improve representation and avoid situations where, for instance, "a search for "Black businessman" [...] yielded an image of a Black man sitting at a bar next to lines of cocaine"; her own Maharashtrian heritage tends to be drowned out in the libraries by a more general, smoothed out vision of "Indian', and that's even assuming the pictures haven't been tagged with the other American sense of 'Indian' in mind. Of course, because this is the 2020s and no pendulum can ever swing without swinging too far, that insightful and often moving material is interspersed with occasional puzzling choices. Any opportunity for a reference to Palestine will be taken, however tenuous the connection, simply because that's the issue of the moment; after one use of 'Latino', we shift without explanation to 'Latine', which I've never seen before, and which coming hot on the heels of 'Latinx' does rather feed into the perception of shibboleths being updated so frequently that it's small wonder if some people abandon the effort to keep up. There was also the puzzling reference to the UK as a "region" rather than, y'know, 'country'. But despite these occasional pieces of grit in the gears, the overall effect is, as Supekar says of looking at thousands of stock images, not unlike Borges' Aleph, the sense of a small room containing the whole world (including, yes, women laughing at salad).

*Like some of my own past employment, it seems to be, or at least to have been, one of those jobs that attracts people who need to pay the bills while their real interest lies elsewhere. Not just photographers with lofty ambitions, though them too; one image of a guy looking stressed by an alarm clock, which I'm sure I have seen before, turns out to be a Mekon shot by Tjinder from Cornershop!

(Netgalley ARC)

[Darius Ostrowski · Rating 1 out of 5]

I believe that this is my thirteenth(!) entry in the Object Lessons series, short books that focus on the hidden history of everyday objects. Although the concept is excellent, I have had a very up and down relationship with the series, it seems that I alternate between “very interesting” and “not at all”. Unfortunately, “Stock Photo” by Simona Supekar definitely fell into the “not at all” category, and is probably tied with “Burger” and “Mushroom” as my least favorite entries in this fascinating series.

The subject matter is quite interesting: the stock photo. We see it everywhere online, and we are exposed to these photos in magazines, billboards, brochures, and pretty much anywhere someone wants to grab your attention for any reason. And the author was at one time part of this industry, working as a “keyworder”, assigning tags to allow for the searching and usage of millions of photos. This would open up various different paths for the book to take: what is the history of stock photos? How did the industry grow and consolidate/expand? How are rights managed between the subject, the photographer, and the customer? How is AI changing the industry? All interesting questions, and many more as well.

Unfortunately, the path taken was to focus solely on the discrimination, diversity underrepresentation, and marginalization of minorities and women. We learn a lot about how Asians are portrayed, with a focus on stereotyping of Indians, as well as Latine, transgender, Middle eastern, and women. Even interviews with key members of the industry all talk about the lack of diversity. Every time the narrative drifts into something interesting, it is quickly brushed aside to return to the political implications of representation. For example, there was a throwaway line about how two photographers had the rights of an In-And-Out Burger Double-Double photo revert back to them by law and they posted it to sell as a stock photo before the company purchased the rights back to protect their property, that had all of the makings of an interesting segue into photo rights but was never followed up on. A very disappointing addition to this series.

What do my least favorite chapters in this series seem to have in common? They veer away from talking about the object/theme and instead use it as a platform to talk about political, philosophical, or ethical issues that really have nothing to do with the object itself. There is a place for those types of books but not what one expects/wants when one reads an “object lesson”. Even focusing on personal stories isn’t a dealbreaker, “Wine” by Meg Bernhard explored this object through the author’s experiences over the course of a year and was a fascinating approach to this large topic. Ms. Supekar has the background and inside knowledge to write what could have been a fascinating look at something we deal with on a daily basis, unfortunately she decided to pursue a different path.

I requested and received a free advanced electronic copy from Bloomsbury Academic via NetGalley. Thank you!

[Sharondblk · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is overtly political. It starts with some chat about genocide that seems irrelevant for the topic at hand, and then settles in to attempt to use the concept of stock photos to ... to what? And that's the core issue with this volume. As Superkar reflecting on her own experience? Trying to show how the contents of stock photos reflect our racist past and present? To talking about the job at a stock photo company? This jumps around a lot. While I always enjoy these books more when the titular object is used to reflect the author's experience, for us to learn something about them or them to learn something about themselves, in this instance it seemed jumpy and disorganised. The facts and the memoir are sitting side by side, rather than illustrating each other. It's a bit repetitious, although commenting that racism is a bit repetitious may be disingenuous. I think Supekar has something to say, but I think she would have got her message across with clarity if the chapters had contained what was in the chapter headings instead of veering wildly around.

Thanks to NetGalley and Bloomsbury Academic for the digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Emily Fernandez · Rating 5 out of 5]

This little book by Simona Supekar is really engaging, and it opened my eyes to the things I see but don’t realize I am seeing, namely stock photos. They are used to sell and promote products and ideas. They are background noise, and that allows them to work subliminally on our subconscious. The fact that Supekar can tie these overlooked images to what we desire and what we accept as a society is fascinating. I love her personal connections to stock photos, especially when she explores how her understanding of her Indian heritage is influenced by the representations that stock photos ubiquitously provide. It reveals how powerful and pervasive stock photos can be. Such a revelation helps us look more deeply at what and who is being represented around us and the dangers of not seeing what we see. How is it that we can see the images of women and children murdered and casually scroll to the next image on our phone – from horrific truths to stylized representations and back again? With so many images how do we fend off dehumanization, especially in the age of AI?

[JM · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you would have told me that one of my favorite books of 2026 centered itself around stock photography, I would have been shocked. I came across Simona Supekar's Stock Photo almost by chance and I'm so glad that I did! I read it in one sitting, something I haven't done since I picking up David Szalay's Flesh sometime last year.

But unlike the novels I often blow through, this struck a different chord - it felt relevant to the moment we're living in and conditions created therein. We have a responsibility to ourselves and others to interrogate the world around us as well as our roles within it. In a world shaped by racism, xenophobia, and active genocide this is a tall order. The way in which she navigates this while maintaining that central lens (stock photography) is remarkable.

One surprising (and perhaps unintended) takeaway is that love and empathy leave no space for hatred. In this sense and in this specific moment where some are so bold as to gaslight others in conflating the two, she speaks truth. I look forward to another book.

[Mandy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’d never really paid any attention to stock photos before. They were just something that popped up when doing a Google search. So I found this addition to the wonderful Object Lessons series a real eye-opener. I was particularly interested in the task of key-wording, and how results can often be skewed by what terms are used. The author convinced me about bias, and I’ve no doubt it exists, but I wasn’t so convinced by the idea that stock photos are by and large political in intent. The book is wide-ranging and informative, and has certainly changed the way I will look at stock photos in the future, but overall I found it somewhat repetitious and disorganised and with far too much about the author’s own life and career. Other volumes in the series also struggle with getting the balance between the personal and the subject matter right, and in this one a little less about the author would have been welcome. However, I did enjoy reading it and learnt a lot.

[Horace Hudson · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting little book that talks about stock photos from topics like how they could often lack diversity, or how ai has changed the industry, to how their categorization oftentimes reflected cultural biases and intertwined it with the author's own experience in the industry and as a person in a way that I found quite compelling. The talks about Palestine did feel a bit shoved in at times when the relation to the topic was tenuous, but it wasn't that bad. It's quite a good addition to the object lessons series.

[Theediscerning · Rating 1 out of 5]

Or, "How Stock Photos are Racist". That's about it. The bits that don't cover racism, covid, or the author's blatant anti-Jewish sentiments, are there almost apologetically – there's a short spell of looking at the making of stock photos of food and drinks, and that's about it. Meanwhile George Floyd gets mentioned three times.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a surprising and excellent book! The author tell her personal story of working in the Stock Photo industry and uses that as a launching pad for a thorough history of stock photos, their ubiquity in modern advertising, and how they have shaped public opinion and political discourse for decades. This is a deep dive in a slim volume. Highly recommend.

[Tony Frampton · Rating 3 out of 5]

This charming little book was an impulse purchase in the impeccable Rizzoli Bookstore in the NoMad district of New York City. The bookstore is known for its extensive collection of art and design literature. An interesting look at how AI is learning from the stock photography world. Our future is being informed by the biases presented in the past.

[Book Club of One · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stock photos are both everywhere and no where. Simona Supekar’s entry in the Object Lessons series explores the way these images are created and organized, pulling from both personal experience and the ways they have been used and studied.

Happily, there is great use of images in this work, sharing some of the discussed images. Stock photos have their uses in visual media and have certainly had fluctuations in popularity in use. Now based in digital systems, their metadata determines what results show based on certain keywords. Supekar narrates the challenge of finding both descriptive but respectful terminologies for categorizing the imagery. The import of this is even greater now as AI perpetuates systemic issues in the ways information is categorized and organized.

The most interesting aspect of this work is the afterlives of the imagery. What was a single photo should for a photographer and their models can have lengthy usage that the model may never know.

Recommended to readers of the Object Lessons series, photographer or systematic and organizational systems.

I received a free digital version of this book via NetGalley thanks to the publisher.