Getty abortions

Images are not neutral. They encourage interpretations, they open some doors of thought and close others, they hide as much as they show. That is especially true of the photographs and videos that are offered by stock companies: those vast resources of searchable and licensable images often show (unintended) biases. To be fair, in recent years stock photography and stock footage websites have become aware of their own blind spots and biases and have tried to correct them. There is now a concerted effort to offer more content showing ethnically and gender diverse models, and to authentically depict disabilities and aging, to name a few.

 

But there is still work to be done, as this desktop video essay by Franzis Kabisch shows. She starts from a very personal experience with abortion and then delves into how this topic is visualized. Kabisch explores Getty Images’ stock photo databases and digs up old teen magazines. It soon becomes apparent that the photographs used to illustrate articles on abortion are very stereotypical and that a limited number of variations of certain visuals keep popping up. Kabisch demonstrates this to great effect in the fictionalized account of an abortion that opens her desktop video (and which is also featured in the trailer above).

 

More importantly, the stock images invariable depict abortion as a miserable and depressing experience. The models in the photographs rarely show their faces which comes with unfortunate connotations. (Think about it, what other photographs do you know that hide their subjects’ faces?) Franzis Kabisch lays it all out clearly and calmly, using her personal story to challenge the anonymity of the stock images.