Looking Through Dementia: What Do Commercial Stock Images Tell Us About Aging and Cognitive Decline?

Commercial stock images are existing, artificially constructed visuals used by businesses and media outlets to articulate certain values, assumptions and beliefs. Despite their pervasiveness and accessibility, little is known about the ways in which stock images communicate meanings relating to health and illness. This study examines a broad range of common stock images that depict dementia and aging, revealing the tendency for older people with dementia to be represented in objectifying and de-humanizing terms—emphasizing disease and deficit at the expense of the whole person, whereas precluding any possibility of enduring personhood. As well as introducing a multimodal critical discourse approach that can be adopted by other researchers examining the ideological underpinnings of health and illness imagery, this study underscores the importance of critically interrogating stock photography—a much neglected, yet profoundly influential, cultural resource that can shape the ways we think about and respond to illness and disease