SheStock and 500px Team Up to Change the Way Women Are Depicted in Stock Photography
TL;DR: fewer white ladies ecstatically eating salad.
Despite previous initiatives designed to diversify the models used in stock photography (including an effort by LeanIn’s Sheryl Sandberg), most stock photo services still depict white, young, and conventionally attractive women as the default–but not SheStock.
A stock photo service for women and by women, SheStock aims to offer “compelling and visceral female-centric images created exclusively by professional women photographers.” And now, through their new partnership with photo community 500px, SheStock’s 150 female photographers will have a chance to share their unique pictures with a wider audience. 500px explains what drove them to partner with the feminist photo service:
Typical stock photography is rife with stereotypes. From the mundane (the dutiful secretary) to the absurd (scantily clad models holding power tools), many stock libraries portray women in a few very predictable and predictably offensive ways.
There’s just one (okay… a lot more than one) problem with this: it’s 2015. Most women are not secretaries, nobody in their right mind operates power tools in lingerie, and photo buyers are interested in representing a reality that wouldn’t also be at home in the show Mad Men.
What do you think, team? Could you see yourself using any of SheStock or 500px’s images? Do you think this new partnership will lead to substantially more representation in stock photos? Let us know in the comments below!
(via The Next Web, all images courtesy 500px)
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