Review: "Stock Photo" by Simona Supekar

Stock Photo by Simona Supekar
Published February 2026 via Bloomsbury Academic
★★★★

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.