Life Images, Final

Right, that’s it. I’ve got to stop using these stock images. I don’t promise I won’t use any stock images, just definitely not these ones. Let me assure you though: these ones are the very best ones.

But I’m done, it’s over. I’ve used them all up now. In one fell swoop, thank god. I showed them all in two slideshows, all day, at our house exhibition ‘Torpor’ the other week.

I found them in a file on Internet Archive called ‘ClipArt 50,000’, which was a CD-ROM produced in 1997. Inside that file there is a folder called ‘Life’, which is where these images come from.

I find them very seductive, and very eery too. They were assembled with the goal of communicating everything, of depicting a little part of every thing in life. In a hallucinatory kind of way, they achieve that. Unfortunately for them, Americana is eery, and so their photos are eery. There is a assumption present in the images, that, while there may be ups and downs, the American life in the late 20th century is a life well lived. The colours make clear that these are cherished memories.

I love using stock images. They’re vague and specific simultaneously. When you string them together, combine and juxtapose them, you do get a sense of everything. A imprint of semiotic totality.

But that is a false sensation, I fear. Life can’t be depicted in the abstract. A decontextualisation, even with a new prefix, remains just that. And I think, when trying to depict totality, we need to gather more context rather than dismantle it.

You can have these images if you want. There is a link to the Internet Archive page here, which contains a torrent file, which I will seed to you. There’s lots of good pictures, go check them out.