Introduction
Looking for photographs or illustrations to use for social media tiles, reports and other publications? Stock image libraries tend to be dominated by able bodied conventionally attractive cisgender white people! Here are some places to find images that reflect greater diversity, especially Australian images. This is a live list. If you know of any other websites to add please let us know by filling in our contact form.
Here is also a great article about how to write an image description in relation to race and gender – How to write an image description by Alex Chen.
Australian
Austock Photo website
Austock Photo
Website: https://www.austockphoto.com.au/
About: A small photo library operating out of Sydney that was started out of frustration of having to use overseas images to tell Australian stories because the photos just did not exist. Their aim is to provide quality and contemporary stock images that represent everyday Australians. Here are some of the images available when one searches using different keywords – diverse, Indigenous, disability, multicultural, gay.
Company / Organisation: Austock Photo
Licence: Royalty free – need to purchase image.
Envato Elements
About: Envato is an Australian company holding a public commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, fuelled by an international creative community. From video templates and royalty-free music to illustrations and stock photos, Envato Elements is the one-stop shop for your creative projects. Explore its vast library of images by using different keywords — Group of diverse people, multigeneration, black professionals, lgbtq, gay pride, nonbinary.
Company / Organisation: Envato
Licence: Royalty-free. All items on Envato Elements have the same simple license terms. You get broad commercial rights, so you can use items with confidence on work or personal projects.
Getty Images – Australia Collection https://www.gettyimages.com.au/collections/thisisaustralia
Getty Images – This is Australia Collection
Website: https://www.gettyimages.com.au/collections/thisisaustralia
About: Getty Images and Canon teamed up to capture the Australia of today in this new collection [started in 2018]. All the images are created in Australia by a diverse community of local photographers. The collection includes women in Science, Indigenous Australians, sustainability, diverse ethnicities, LGTBQIA, people with a disability, etc.
Company / Organisation: Getty Images, Canon
Licence: Need to purchase rights
Getty images collection of stock photos of people with a disability
Getty Images – Disability Collection
Website: https://www.gettyimages.com.au/collaboration/boards/M3XDj9exmUWxvlpwQ0Ih0g
About: Verizon Media, Getty Images and the National Disability Leadership Alliance have partnered to create The Disability Collection, a growing collection of stock images that break stereotypes and authentically portray people with disabilities in everyday life. We are empowering our industry to get real about disability representation with stock photos that can be licensed and used by anyone in the world.
Company / Organisation: Getty Images
Licence: Need to purchase rights
Article: New stock images represent Australia’s disability community by The Disability Support Guide
Shutterstock website
Shutterstock – Australian images
Website: https://www.shutterstock.com/search/diversity+australia
About: Shutterstock is one of the biggest stock images websites in the world. They have many images that represent diversity and inclusion. The key to finding Australian images is in the search: put the keyword followed by Australia, as shown in the image above. Here are some examples of different themes and groups – Equality, Disability, LGBT.
Company / Organisation: Shutterstock
Licence: Need to purchase rights
International
Affect: Disabled And Here
Website: https://affecttheverb.com/disabledandhere/
About: Disabled And Here is a celebration of disabled Black, Indigenous, people of colour (BIPOC) in the Pacific Northwest in the United States. Affect creates media campaigns and resources to amplify multiply-marginalized people working in and for their own communities. Their mission is to catalyze social change through education, connection, and collaboration.
Company / Organisation: Affect
Licence: Creative Commons
Black Illustrations
Website: https://www.blackillustrations.com/
About: Black illustrations is a series of digital designs of black people for online projects. John Saunders, the founder and designer, developed as he noted “There just isn’t a lot of diversity in design. People of color are often underrepresented in illustrations, lacking in the design process and often go unseen in visuals across the internet. We saw the lack of diversity as an opportunity to create a free resource for everyone. As a way to add diversity to online content by showcasing black people and people of color in a myriad of tasks, we hope to be the spark that creates more change in the digital landscape.”
Company / Organisation: Black Illustrations
Licence: Free and Paid
Centre for Better Ageing
Website: https://ageingbetter.resourcespace.com/pages/home.php
About: The Centre for Ageing Better has launched a free library of positive and realistic images of people aged 50 and over. The images show a more realistic depiction of ageing and old age – to provide alternatives to the commonly used pictures of ‘wrinkly hands’ or walking sticks. The library, which contains over 400 images and will be regularly updated, offers organisations a wide selection of images that avoid stereotypes associated with older people. Images in the library are free for use and cover various themes related to ageing such as health, community activity and employment. Download their guide to using the image library and guidance around commissioning age-positive images.
Company / Organisation: Centre for Better Ageing
Licence: Free
Getty Images: Lean In Collection
Getty Images Collections
Website: https://www.gettyimages.com.au/
About: Getty Images have recognised the lack of diversity in their collections and are collaborating with organisations and photographers around the world to create images that reflect everyone. Below are new and developing collections.
- Muslim Girl
Modern Muslim women being themselves. - Project #ShowUs
“Getty Images, Dove and Girlgaze are proud to present Project #ShowUs – a ground-breaking library of 5000+ photographs devoted to shattering beauty stereotypes by showing female-identifying and non-binary individuals as they are, not as others believe they should be. The images created by this global community of 116 such photographers from 39 countries, will support these photographers of the future so that media and advertisers can continue to reflect the authentic experiences of women around the world.” - Disrupting Aging
“Getty Images partnered with AARP to build and launch The Disrupt Aging® Collection, a collection of more than 1,000 images that depict aging in an authentic, positive and more inclusive way.”
Company / Organisation: Getty Images
Licence: Need to purchase rights
Humaaans – Mix and match illustrations of people with a design library
Website: https://www.humaaans.com/
About: Create your own human with this mix and match design library generously created and shared by designer Pablo Stanley. Elements to mix and match include people from different ethnicities, e.g. hijab, and people with disabilities, e.g. wheelchair.
Company / Organisation: Humaaans by Pablo Stanley
Licence: Opensource, free for commercial or personal use
Noun Project
Website: https://blog.thenounproject.com/introducing-noun-project-photos-35d92bc95ab7
About: A collection of photos that have been carefully selected to celebrate diversity and support the critical work of moving our society toward a more equitable future for all. Our collection has been developed through the lens of inclusion. Each photo available on Noun Project has been carefully selected to celebrate the diverse, beautiful world we live in. Throughout this process, we consulted diversity, equity and inclusion experts and deliberately worked to create a set of photos that more accurately represent and benefit everyone, not just a few. Because representation is a fundamental part of equality.
Company / Organisation: Noun Project
Licence: Offers 3 types of licences – Creative Commons License, Royalty-Free Noncommercial License and Royalty-Free Limited Commercial License
Representation Matters: Stock Image Library http://representationmatters.me/index.php
Representation Matters: Ethnic + Social Diversity and Healthy Body Image
Website: https://representationmatters.me
About: Representation Matters is the world’s first and best site for high-resolution, royalty-free, diverse stock images for commercial use. You’ll find images focused on inclusion and diversity in all walks of life. Collections include body image, people with a disability, mental health, LGTBQIA, etc.
Company / Organisation: SmugMug
Licence: Need to purchase rights
Scopio
Website: https://scop.io
About: “Scopio is an image marketplace of more than 300,000 photos from photographers in 150 countries. We made Forbes30under30 this year for our mission, to make stock photography more diverse, authentic and affordable.” Based in New York with a focus on diversity includes collections such as LGTBQ, Black Lives Matter, and Diverse People.
Company / Organisation: Scopio
Licence: Pay $29US/month
TONL – Diverse Stock Photos
Website: https://tonl.co/
About: TONL seeks to transform the idea of stock photography by displaying images of diverse people and their stories around the world. Our voices and visibility matter. Photography and storytelling can help humanize and hopefully diminish the stereotypes and prejudice against black and brown people, especially. We wanted to challenge the stale, homogenous look of traditional stock photography by showcasing the many ethnic backgrounds of everyday people.
A great feature of the website is the inclusion of the Narrative section giving the images context, meaning and story.
Company / Organisation: Tonl
Licence: Need to purchase rights
Gender Spectrum Collection
Vice Media – The Gender Spectrum Collection
Website: https://genderspectrum.vice.com/
About: The Gender Spectrum Collection is a stock photo library featuring images of trans and non-binary models that go beyond the clichés. This collection aims to help media better represent members of these communities as people not necessarily defined by their gender identities—people with careers, relationships, talents, passions, and home lives.
Company / Organisation: Vice Media
Licence: Free to use under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives Licence.
Explore Further
- Create Her Stock – Images featuring melanated / black women.
- Library of Congress (US) – Provides digital collections that are free to use and reuse. The Library believes that this content is either in the public domain, has no known copyright, or has been cleared by the copyright owner for public use.
- PICRYL – A public domain search & similarity engine. Picryl is a media source you can use to find images, documents, and references.
- Freepik – A wide catalogue of free resources. You can find them by filtering by “Free”, from the “Filters” option on the site, on the top left corner of the screen after you make a search.
- StockCake – Offers high-quality photos are accessible to everyone, for any project or purpose. Their platform offers a vast and diverse collection of AI-generated photos, all available in the public domain for free.
- Wikimedia Commons – The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. empowers and engage people around the world to collect and develop content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally, free of charge.
- Pexels – A free stock photo and video resource that helps designers, bloggers, and everyone who is looking for visuals to find great photos and videos that can be downloaded and used for free.