The gender spectrum collection: Stock photos beyond the binary

The Gender Spectrum Collection is a stock photo library featuring images of trans and non-binary models.

This collection aims to improve the representation of diverse genders in stock images, and ensure stock images accurately portray the richness and multidimensionality of the lives of gender diverse people, including their/our careers, relationships, talents, passions and home lives.

This resource and the following information was contributed by Alice Macfarlan.

Authors and their affiliation

Publisher: Vice

Key features

The images in this collection have been made available under a Creative Commons license (Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International - CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).

Detailed information about the project and how to appropriately use the images are available in the Usage Guidelines.

The images are organised into the following categories:

• Lifestyle
• Relationships
• Technology
• Work
• School
• Health
• Moods

How have you used or intend on using this resource?

One of the difficulties in my job is finding stock photos that are high quality and appropriately represent the diversity in society. When looking for images of people, most of the well-known stock photo libraries are heavily biased towards white and cis-gendered men and women, and I often spend a lot of time looking for images that reflect a wider diversity. So I'm really glad to have found this collection that sets out to address this imbalance by providing a range of photos of trans and non-binary models that can be used for a range of different applications. As Broadly writes in its usage guidelines:

"Images of trans and nonbinary people can be used to illustrate any topic, not just stories related directly to those communities. Consider accessing these photos for stories on topics like beauty, work, education, relationships, or wellness. Including transgender and non-binary people in stories not explicitly about gender identity paints a more accurate depiction of the world we live in today."

Why would you recommend it to other people?

First off, I'd recommend people read the usage guidelines of this collection, which not only has important information about appropriate usage, captioning and acknowledgement, but also discusses the importance of challenging your own implicit biases and assumptions about about "how gender identity and gender expression correlates with other aspects of identity such as sex assigned at birth, race, age, sexuality, and class" and how "there is not one way to 'look transgender'". Even if you don't use a specific image from this collection, the ideas and guidelines presented here will be relevant the next time you need to find a stock photo, or approve images in a presentation or final report.