The Hidden History of Stock Photography

Scholar Simona Supekar’s book “Stock Photo” (2026), published in Bloomsbury’s Object Lessons series, examines how stock photography has helped perpetuate racism and sexism and how those biases now shape AI-generated imagery. Supekar argues that ubiquitous, seemingly neutral stock images influence what audiences internalize as “normal,” making representational gaps and stereotypes especially consequential online. The book cites examples such as searches for “maternity” and “Indian” yielding mostly AI-generated results on one site, suggesting AI filled a preexisting absence in available imagery, and notes that light-skinned Indian people are overrepresented in Getty’s collection. It also recounts that searches like “Black businessman” historically could return stereotyped and harmful results, including an image of a Black man seated at a bar beside lines of cocaine.

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