I have some friends who were telling me I should start a Tumblr blog, but for the life of me I couldn't think about what, since I barely have enough to write something here every day, not to mention the other project I work on (by the way, last night was fantastic and thank you to everyone who came or performed). Someone told me though that it's not necessary to actually write things but to just collect things (like these shots of Oprah's audience members).

So I decided to start one collecting photos that I've always found fascinating and disturbing and sad and slightly funny and that's the stock/anonymous photos used to illustrate news stories on obesity. Even before obesity became the major story that it is I always thought, as I watched news stories featuring some anonymous person walking across the street, "Does that person know he's being filmed? What would he think if he saw himself on TV? How did they set up that shot, did they argue over who best illustrated this story?"

So here it is, Obesity Stock Photos. I'm not trying to make any sort of point in regards to obesity in general, or make fun of the people in the photos (although I do wonder about the people who obviously posed for the pictures: I hope they made a lot of money.) There are times when a story uses a photo of someone and I wonder, "They're supposed to be obese?" but it's not really about judging who's fat vs who's not. It just seems like the one story where the photography can be rather mean and drive-by (you don't see stories on disabled people featuring people in wheelchairs with their heads cropped out). Maybe stock photos of hamburgers are just really expensive.