Book size: 8.5” x 11”
Softcover with flaps
90 pages

Essay by Sheila Dickinson.

Will be shipped to you. Also available for sale at Rosalux Gallery (Minneapolis, MN).

More images/videos from this project can be viewed online at Stock Pile

About Stock Pile: I’ve had a fascination with stock photography for some time, with its generic ubiquity and bland cheeriness. Stock photo sites put out briefs telling photographers what is going to be hot the next month or year, and as I perused the prompts coming out in March and April 2020, out of curiosity, I realized they synthesized certain trends in our culture and aspects of this unusual time (in their commercially-filtered way). The briefs seemed frivolous during the events of 2020, but still managed to capture the zeitgeist.

In response, I began a weekly practice of reacting to the stock photography companies’ prompts, making quick and strange images and videos at home or close by, using what I had on hand. I take instructions from these prompts—but in a way that misunderstands them or takes them a bit too far, or too literally. In many of the images I heighten the absurdity of the prompts or pull out some fascinating aspect or phrase that I think deserves further reflection.