“Top Ten Stock Photography Cliches”

So I’ve read the “Top Ten Stock Photography Cliches” at fortymedia.com. Great work! Take a look at it! And, now, you are being warned, these clichés are in the rasx() context:

• The Handshake of Synergy. A couple of ex farm boys making egocentric, backroom deals. Any refined “gentleman” knows to have his cuffs showing under his suit sleeves.
• The Flirty Customer Service Gal*.* Just professional, sexual, corporate compliance. The large, fake pearls around the neck smack of nouveau riche, crystal cathedral, republican-housewife aspirations. The reality is that she has to work everyday and assume the prone position at the phone.
• The Big Thumbs of Triumph*.* The thumbs-up is traditional, Roman, emperor choreography at the circus. So the gee-whiz kid is not as cute and harmless as you think he is… I can imagine at least one Iraqi family meeting a kid that looks just like this young person in the middle of the night at gun point.
• The Romantic Glow of the Laptop*.* Fake. Models just going through the motions. The photographer assumes that the “right people” are too busy and self-absorbed to see the subtlety. The photographer is right.
• Growth: The Handful of Manure*.* This symbolizes death. I see a green life being removed from its colorful environment to become pale, wither and die.
• The Air Up There*.* European fascination with renaissance perspective and fairy tales—jack and the beanstalk in an existential vacuum, baby.
• The United Colors of Megacorp. The European redefinition of the emperor’s menagerie of human booty… multiculturalism is often represented in egocentric terms—individuals from different groups coming together—instead of relatively homogeneous groups coming together. The ghetto streets of ancient Rome were “multicultural” because fascist centurions “fell in love” all over the Mediterranean world. Let’s not forget that imperial Rome defined fascism.
• Lise Gagne’s Business Folks*.* To quote Chris Rock: “For white people the sky’s the limit; for Black people, the limit’s the sky.” I think I heard that right.
• Ewa, the Polish Everywoman*.* Since I’m from California, please excuse my bias. This photo represents a ‘secret revolution’ among young women of European descent to respect their bodies and stay out of the sun. High definition television out among the colored masses may eventually start revealing hidden truths—or the special effects guys may have to whip out the healing brush to keep actresses with “universal appeal” employed.
• Telecommuting from the Edge*.* Remember those German mountain films? Leni Riefenstahl? Billy goat? Paul Mooney? Anyone?

rasx()