Stock image collection authentically portrays people with disabilities
One year ago, on Global Disability Awareness Day, Getty Images launched a compilation of 50 stock photographs that depicted people with disabilities as human beings with full, gratifying lives.
Dubbed "The Disability Collection," the pictures set out to dispel stereotypes which often cast those with a disability as either "heroic" or "pitiful," defined by any physical, intellectual, or developmental limitations. Now that collection has more than 1,200 images which thoughtfully portray disability as just one part of a person's complex identity. The models come from diverse backgrounds and show a range of disabilities, a conscious effort to reflect the world as it is rather than how it's been filtered through one photographer's idea of what normal looks like.
The collection features smiling parents playing with children who happen to have a developmental or intellectual disability. A gay couple lounges on their bed looking at a tablet, and one partner's prosthetic leg is barely noticeable in the background. A musician sits in his wheelchair while working in a recording studio.
The collection's rapid growth over the past year heartens Jordan Nicholson, a photographer commissioned by Getty Images, Verizon Media, and the National Disability Leadership Alliance to help launch and contribute to the collection.
"I think it’s amazing, and I think it’s sort of representative of what people want," says Nicholson. "That demand is there, it’s just a matter of getting the images created."
Indeed, Getty Images' research found that searches for "disability icons" and "physical disability" increased by 269 percent and 162 percent, respectively, between 2017 and 2018.
Nicholson, who has a rare genetic condition called TAR syndrome characterized by the absence of bone in the forearm, says that contributing to the collection has been personally rewarding.
"I connect with the whole mission of it just 'cause growing up I never really saw people who looked like me, or different kinds of bodies in general," he says. "I think I'm just realizing how powerful it is when you actually start making these kinds of efforts."
The collection launched with a comprehensive guide for photographers interested in contributing their own images. The guidelines urge photographers to emphasize concepts like dignity, inclusion, independence, price, power, success, and mobility in their images.
They discourage depictions that portray disability as something that needs to be "cured" or "fixed," and highlight how disability is intersectional and should be represented across ethnicity, class, religion, culture, and sexual orientation. They also include a list of best practices for photographing people with disabilities. Getty considers the guide a living document to be updated as necessary.
"I think it’s about just representing people who are different but representing them in a way [where] that’s not their only identity," says Nicholson. "I don't go through my life feeling that way. I have a disability, but I am so much more than just my disability. It’s really about making images that showcase that."
Topics Activism Social Good
Rebecca Ruiz is a Senior Reporter at Mashable. She frequently covers mental health, digital culture, and technology. Her areas of expertise include suicide prevention, screen use and mental health, parenting, youth well-being, and meditation and mindfulness. Rebecca's experience prior to Mashable includes working as a staff writer, reporter, and editor at NBC News Digital and as a staff writer at Forbes. Rebecca has a B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College and a masters degree from U.C. Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism.
