Stock Pile | Areca Roe

Stock images are big business, and they are everywhere. Areca Roe’s series of photographs and videos, titled Stock Pile, are her response to the absurdity of stock photo companies’ prompts for photographers, and a send-up of stock imagery’s generic ubiquity and commercially-polished cheeriness.

Stock imagery sites put out briefs or prompts predicting to photographers, videographers, and illustrators what’s going to be in demand in the next month or year.  In response to the prompts, Roe creates images and short videos using materials she has on hand or can get quickly and cheaply, often using herself as a model, and sometimes enlisting her family as collaborators. 

Roe takes instructions from the text of the briefs—but in a way that misunderstands them or takes things a bit too far, or too literally. In many of the images she heightens the absurdity of the text, or pulls out some fascinating aspect or phrase that deserves further reflection. By satirizing the briefs, she exposed new meanings and subtexts within the stock photo company prompts.

About the Artist

Areca Roe is an artist based in Mankato and Minneapolis, Minnesota. She has been a member of Rosalux Gallery since 2015, has recently shown work at SooVAC in Minneapolis, Fotografiska Stockholm, MarkArts in Wichita, and many regional art centers. Roe has also received grants and fellowships supporting her work, including the Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant and the Art(ists) on the Verge Fellowship. Her work has been featured on several prominent websites, including Colossal, Slate, Juxtapoz, WIRED, National Geographic, and Fast Company; and in print magazines, Der Spiegel Wissen magazine and Le Monde. Roe received a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Minnesota, and is an Associate Professor of photography and video at Minnesota State University, Mankato. 

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