With impressive expertise, provocative thought, and gentle humor, Stock Photo maps a quite pervasive yet mostly unnoticed aspect of contemporary life. Photography aficionados will want to read Stock Photo, but so will any reader curious to understand our world with more insight and compassion.

Local News Pasadena

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