“You Can’t Be What You Can’t See”: Popular Appeals of Empowerment and Authenticity in Getty Images’ Lean in Collection

• In Event: The Popular Cultures of Digital Photography: Practices, Aesthetics, Institutions

Abstract

In 2014, Getty Images partnered with Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In foundation to curate a collection of over 3000 stock photographs “devoted to the powerful depiction of women, girls and families” (LeanIn.org). With the motto “You can’t be what you can’t see”, the stated aim of the collection is to overturn clichés in the portrayal of women in media and advertising. By focusing on the Lean In Collection, this paper examines how increasingly popular (and arguably also neoliberal) discourses about empowerment and authenticity in media portrayals of women have become embedded in the commercial and archival logics of stock photography–a genre that typically relies on ‘generic’ and ‘universal’ visual cues while also aiming to represent a range of concepts, identities and situations. The paper will combine an analysis of the images included in the Lean In Collection with an appraisal of the media discourses surrounding the collection itself and an account of interviews with producers of stock imagery. In doing so, it will highlight key tensions between the appeal of popular aesthetics and both the technical and commercial imperatives of stock photography.

Bio:
Giorgia Aiello is a Lecturer in the School of Media and Communication at the University of Leeds. Her research and publications focus on branding, photography and the urban built environment. She is a guest editor of the special issue “Difference and Globalization” of the journal Visual Communication (with Luc Pauwels) and the recipient of a four-year EU grant for the research project “Globalization, Visual Communication, Difference”.

Author

• Giorgia Aiello, U of Leeds