Taking Stock

In this post for The Person in the (Big) Data edition of EM, we hear from Giorgia Aiello @giorgishka who demonstrates the ways in which she used both digital and traditional methods to explore the people and practices that characterise the stock photography industry. Giorgia’s stories of photographers attempting to game the algorithms that determine which photographs will come out on top in a search for cheese are compelling and memorable, and they just show how important it is to develop an expanded idea of just what ‘data’ is constituted by, even if the dominant discourse is more limited.