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NET ART
ANTHOLOGY

DIS Images

DIS (LAUREN BOYLE, SOLOMON CHASE, MARCO ROSO, DAVID TORO, AND COLLABORATORS)

2013

DIS Images was an agency and web platform that commissioned and licensed artist-made images for use in advertising or publishing, and offered a radical alternative to the uncanny homogeneity of commercial stock images.

The project grew out of the DIS collective’s long-running online publication DisMagazine, and reflects the magazine’s signature interest in neoliberal corporate aesthetics as well as the varied practices of the community of artists that surrounded it.

Josh Kline, How Much is that Intern in the Window? from DIS Images, 2013. Courtesy of DIS.

Explore an archival copy of disimages.com

DIS Images responded to the tendency for commercial stock photo agencies to offer very generic imagery which often reproduced stereotypes and gender norms in the process.

For example, blogger Edith Zimmerman called attention in 2011 to the strange prevalence of stock images of “woman laughing alone with salad."

Maja Cule, Laughing Alone with Salad from DIS Images, 2013. Screenshot, 2017, Google Chrome 63 on macOS 10.12.

Agencies eventually did begin to recognize this issue and work to diversify their offerings through projects such as the “Lean In Collection” on Getty Images.

DIS Images, in contrast, kept many of stock photography’s reproducible gestures intact, but introduced less palatable aspects of life under late capitalism, and modeled radical or satirical responses.

DIS, DIS Images, 2013. Screenshot, 2017, Google Chrome 63 on macOS 10.12, disimages.com.

Early collections included a photo of Angela Pham of the Bravo reality TV show Gallery Girls doing yoga in the middle of a forest fire, and a red-headed toddler with a fistful of cash posing in a washing machine.

The site also featured sets of images developed by artists and art collectives, including Ian Cheng, Dora Budor, Andrew Norman Wilson, Anicka Yi, and the Jogging.

“We’re interested in manipulating the idea of a stock image being ‘a code without a message’ by allowing messages to seep into the equation while still maintaining its status as a multipurpose image commodity” — DIS

DIS, The New Wholesome from DIS Images, 2013.

Throughout its existence, DIS Images reproduced the visual tropes of late capitalism with a fluency that rewards extended viewing.

Shopping cart screen from DIS Images, 2013. Screenshot, 2017, Google Chrome 74 on macOS 10.14.

At the same time, it was a significant experiment with adopting commercial structures toward sustainable forms of online cultural practice, an experiment that DIS continues to pursue with their "edutainment" video platform [dis.art].

More From CHAPTER 4: 2011-2016

08/24/18 Untitled/Clefa Devin Kenny 2013
08/31/18 Image Objects Artie Vierkant 2011 - ongoing
09/14/18 Ethira Amalia Ulman 2013
11/16/18 Contra-Internet Inversion Practice #1: Constituting an Outside (Utopian Plagiarism) Zach Blas 2015
11/30/18 I'm Here and There Jonas Lund 2011
02/14/19 Sister Unn’s Bunny Rogers & Filip Olszewski 2011 - 2012
02/05/19 Youth Mode: A Report on Freedom K-hole & Box 1824 2013
02/08/19 Consciousness Engine 2: absentfatherbot Bogosi Sekhukhuni 2013
02/19/19 Material Speculation: Isis Morehshin Allahyari 2015 - 2016
02/21/19 Death Imitates Language Harm van den Dorpel 2016 - ongoing
03/12/19 I’m that angel Tyler Coburn 2011 - ongoing
03/21/19 /INB4/ Liz Mputu & /inb4/ 2014 - ongoing
03/21/19 #PAYBLACKTiME RaFia Santana 2016 - ongoing
05/10/19 Psycho Nymph Exile Porpentine Charity Heartscape 2016 - 2017
05/17/19 Image Atlas Taryn Simon with Aaron Swartz 2012 - ongoing
05/17/19 Mexiconceptual H̶E̶R̶I̶B̶E̶R̶T̶O̶ Y̶é̶p̶e̶z̶ (Satélite) 2016
06/30/19 Daily Times (Performer) Siebren Versteeg 2012
06/30/19 AGNES Cécile B. Evans 2013 - 2014
06/30/19 The Game: The Game Angela Washko 2016 - 2019

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