Stock Photo

Name: Stock Photo
Price: 19.99 AUD
Availability: PreOrder
ISBN: 9798765108901

Simona Supekar (Assistant Professor of English, Pasadena City College, USA)

$19.99

Paperback

Forthcoming
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English

Bloomsbury Academic
19 February 2026

Photography & photographs; Semiotics & semiology; Philosophy: aesthetics; Cultural studies; Media studies

Series: Object Lessons

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.

By: Simona Supekar (Assistant Professor of English Pasadena City College USA)
Imprint: Bloomsbury Academic
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 164mm, Width: 118mm, Spine: 16mm
Weight: 180g
ISBN: 9798765108901
Series: Object Lessons
Pages: 184
Publication Date: 19 February 2026
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

List of Illustrations Preface 1. Armchairs and Avocados and Armpits 2. Beginnings 3. Portrait and Close-up and White Background 4. Portrait and Wide Angle 5. Business 6. Twentysomething 7. Landscapes 8. Cheese 9. Still Life 10. Divers* 11. Related Keywords 12. Email 13. Terrorist 14. Funny 15. Recycling 16. Transition Acknowledgments Notes Index

Simona Supekar is Assistant Professor of English at Pasadena City College in California, USA. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic and the Los Angeles Review of Books, and she was a 2021 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction finalist for her novel manuscript.

Reviews for Stock Photo

Simona Supekar’s Stock Photo is a highly insightful and illuminating examination of how culture, commerce, and technology collide to shape our modern visual world. Supekar adeptly traces the powerful lineage of the image, from the human hands of art history and stock modeling to today’s endless digital feeds and vast datasets that train artificial intelligence, revealing its immense influence on how we see and are seen. This is an essential, forward-thinking meditation on social change, challenging readers to be inspired to imagine a more diverse, ethical, and dazzlingly inventive new visual era. * Peter Chow-White, co-editor of Race After the Internet *