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Hi friend,
 
One of my images was used on Psychology Today! Get your own at Body Liberation Stock.
 
Speaking of photography, I'm so delighted to be photographing boudoir sessions again! It's been two entire years and I cannot wait to dive in. See your session and pricing options here.
 
I'd been resisting re-opening till it was ā€œsafeā€ to do so, but safe has taken on a different meaning in 2021 and going forward.
 
I know that I can't guarantee perfect safety, but I'm aiming for ā€œas safe as possible.ā€ I'm requiring clients to be vaccinated and boostered (as am I), and I may choose to mask up as well.
 
I'm getting a lot of inquiries about portraits, business branding and headshots as well. Those will be re-opening later this year when a) the weather is more appropriate and b) hopefully it will be easier to photograph in indoor spaces.
 
One last thing before we dive into this week's letter:
 
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This week's letter is an excerpt from my appearance on the Hell Yeah Techcast with Jenn Hume. 
Stock photos are both prescriptive and descriptive. So when I talk about them being descriptive the reason is that when you go to the big stock photo sites, Getty, Dreamstime, Dream Stock, all these places. When you go to them, the photos all look the same. 
 
And so they are descriptive in that if I am your average mainstream stock photographer, I want to take photos that are going to sell. And so Iā€™m going to work with models. Iā€™m going to use sets. Larger stock companies like Getty. 
 
When you see these hospitalsā€¦ you canā€™t see me, but Iā€™m making air quotes. When you see these hospitals and these conference rooms and these bank branches and all these professional settings that look naturally clean and new, itā€™s because those are sets just like TV sets.
 
 
Iā€™m told that somewhere here in Seattle, Getty images actually have a studio. Itā€™s like a movie studio where there are sets where they take these photos. And so these are models posing in fake rooms. 
 
But that is becauseā€¦ again, photographers are being descriptive in that they are taking photos of what we expect to see because they want to take photos of the most normative and the most socially approved people and places possible so that their photos sell and thatā€™s fair. 
 
But on the other hand, stock photography is also prescriptive in that the more we see only a certain type of body or skin color or place represented or gender then that is what we expect to see.
 
 
And so photography in itself can perpetuate systems of oppression. It can perpetuate beauty standards, it can perpetuate all these things, and it does. And so, using a stock photo that is not of a 22-year-old model posing as a doctor or whatever, using photos that are outside that is really cool because it directly changes the world. 
 
I know that that sounds very dramatic and thatā€™s because it is, because by using photos and marketing, that arenā€™t just these extremely mainstream ones, not only are you attracting new business because youā€™re representing your actual customers. 
 
I donā€™t know of any business where every single customer is a 22-year-old professional model, maybe if youā€™re a model agency, but even then your clients are going to be other companies, your clients arenā€™t your models.
 
 
So youā€™re representing your actual customers and youā€™re making them feel welcomed. So not only that, but then in a more abstract sense, youā€™re changing the world because youā€™re helping change, who gets represented. 
 
And the more we normalize bodies outside 22-year-old models that phrase no longer has any meaning for me, by the way. The more we normalize bodies and images that are outside that 22-year-old model the more all of us feel like our bodies are normal.
 
f I go to the website for your gym and everyone looks like a 22-year-old model, I just assume that people who look like that will be welcome and then I wonā€™t be. And so much of this is at the subconscious level too. And as we know, marketing is very much a semi-conscious to subconscious thing. 
 
But we really do learn whoā€™s going to be welcomed by the images that are used. You know, if Iā€™m finding gyms that are showing nothing but very thin people I donā€™t even know if youā€™re machines are going to support my weight, I donā€™t have any way of knowing whether I will be accommodated or included.
 
So thatā€™s why I do what I do. Thatā€™s why Iā€™m taking photos of people in very large bodies because Iā€™m the only person on the planet doing that work, literally.
Warmly,
Lindley
 
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The Conversation

"Older women know who they are, and that makes them more beautiful than younger ones. I like to see a face with some character. I want to see lines. I want to see wrinkles." 
Ā» Naveen Andrews

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