Clive Thompson wants an end to stock photography:
Let me be blunt: Stock photography needs to die. In his 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language,” George Orwell argued that clichéd language produces clichéd thinking. Using a stale image, as he’d put it, “makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.” Stock photography imprisons us in the same cognitive jail. Its intentionally bland images are designed to be usable in many vaguely defined situations. This produces wretched photography for the same reason Hallmark cards produce wretched poetry. We live in a visual world, communicating and thinking in pictures. When we use stock photos, we think in clichés.
His solution:
You take pictures every day, many of which I’ll bet are superb. Several photo-sharing sites let you slap on a Creative Commons license, allowing others to use your pics. (A bunch of my own pictures are on Flickr.) If everyone reading this article posted their best snapshots online, we could seed hundreds of thousands of free pictures of real things and real people in the real world. The true cure for stock photography is inside your camera phone.
(Photo: “Smiling young girl eating salad for breakfast.” By Kristian Sekulic/Vetta. More such images can be seen on this classic tumblr. Update from a reader: “How can you mention ‘Women Laughing Alone With Salad’ without also mentioning ‘Women Struggling to Drink Water‘?…”)
The Dish 