Perfect strangers in the city: Stock photography as ambient imagery

In this chapter, I focus on stock photography as an unremarkable and mundane visual genre that permeates our everyday life in cities, and which therefore also contributes to shaping our experiences in and of urban public space. I take on Paul Frosh’s invitation to move beyond the ‘standard critique’ of stock photography as being clichéd and stereotypical to gain insight into its characteristics as an ambient medium. I show how stock photography is used to promote businesses and services through smiling individuals and other familiar and flexible subjects that often enliven otherwise vacant or drab storefronts and ultimately also confer warmth to otherwise bland if not alienating urban ‘landscapes of capital’. In doing so, I highlight the role of stock images in promoting individualized, personal engagements with a range of urban sites and surfaces in ways that may make us feel close to them and also good about ourselves as we traverse the city. With a critical approach to examining the relationship between the aesthetic qualities of stock photography and their experiential import, I finally reflect on some of the problems and potentials of this often overlooked type of ambient imagery in the creation and regulation of urban mood.