Increasing Trans Visibility through Increasing Trans Folks in Stock Photos

Photo by Abhishek Yadav for Scop.io

For Trans Day of Visibility, I am asking my photographer friends to use services, like Scop.io, to upload more pictures of trans and NB people. (I included a link to their contributor page to answer questions about what this entails).

I feel this is important for platforms like Medium, which use stock photos provided by Upsplash. With only 210 results when using the search term “transgender” Medum.com content creators will end up using (and re-using) the same photos over and over. And none of these photos showcase trans folks doing everyday tasks or work.

Screenshot from Medium.com with the search term “transgender.” Only 210 results are available for Medium users.

For those of us talking about topics, like job searching or work environments, the lack of stock photos with diverse faces impacts our ability to demonstrate the diversity of the world we are trying to describe. For instance, it’s hard to talk about the pay gap that trans women experience in the workplace without highlighting photos of trans women in the workplace (FWIW: it’s 60 cents to the dollar that straight, White men make).

For my professional blog, I try to include different faces than those found on the standard photo sites, like Upsplash. It…