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Plumb the depths of Getty and AP and you’re bound to notice one thing about stock photographs: most of them are of white people.
Stock photography is the supply of photographs by agencies. They are often licenced for specific uses.
Those who have spent even the briefest of stints in marketing or media will notice a glaring dearth of images depicting black people.
At #Trending, we regularly need pics to accompany our sex columnist Jade Zwane’s pieces. It’s almost always a headache because stock images that depict black sexuality are really hard to find.
Jacques and Dahcia Bastien are black Americans behind multicultural marketing agency Shade, which was started to address the lack of diversity in the influencer market. Now, they’ve done something even cooler by starting a free portal of stock photography of black people.
Called Nappy, the site is described simply: “Beautiful, high-res photos of black and brown people. For free.”
Here, you can finally find pictures of black people doing the things stock photographers have shown white people doing for decades.
The creators say: “If you were to type in the word ‘coffee’ on Unsplash [a free stock photography site], you’d rarely see a cup of coffee being held by black or brown hands. It’s the same result if you type in terms such as ‘computer’ or ‘travel.’ You may find an image or two, but they’re pretty rare. But black and brown people drink coffee too, we use computers and we certainly love travelling.”
Nappy isn’t perfect though – under the “work” tab, for instance, there are no pictures of black women and there still aren’t pics of black sexuality.
But, as the site is being run for free and relies on contributions, it’s sure to expand its offering.
- If you’re a photographer who wants to help, submit your pictures to nappy.co
