The Stock Photography As A Part Of Cultural And Creative Industries Of The Digital Age

Photography of the digital age has lost the properties of a physically tangible product and has become intellectual property. Simultaneously with this process, the process of transition of photography into a mass-produced good has taken place. Market demands towards photography as a product of mass consumption often reduce the aesthetic and artistic standards that have been set by its development period in the process of photography coming to life as a medium. Despite the negative effects that accompany the transition of photography in its process of transformation into a mass-produced good, even such photographic “products” are able to encourage to a particular activity and ultimately generate revenue for numerous industries standing in the background of the “photography-product”. Production and distribution of stock photographs1 is one of the derivates of the digital age in which business in the domain of production of photographs is expanded to their distribution to users of websites and/or digital communication channels. In doing so, websites are at the same time used as distribution channels for photography as a creative product. Such symbiosis of photography – means of communication and network space – communication space – allows business association of these communication subjects and their new perspectives in the digital age. The Internet is becoming a bridge for photography, which allows it to cross into a new dimension, thus expanding its production and sales capacities. After the first 100 years of photography as a medium, its new forms of existence are just being unfolded. It is important to point out that stock photography has an important role in cultural and creative industry, which is currently in the phase of being formally defined in the Republic of Croatia.