Ariane: a stock epic

Dubbed “the overexposed stock image model” online, Ariane is the go-to model on Shutterstock.com, relied on by art directors in advertising agencies when the clients cannot afford a proper shoot but give the instruction anyway to make the ad feel, in marketing gobbledygook, “aspirational” yet “local.” She has been spotted on billboards & print ads, her face left rarely to the recognition of others who remain unaware that their various subjectivities have been hailed repeatedly by the same model, in protean anonymity. She remains unknown despite her ubiquity. An epic collage of appropriated ekphrastic tags, the book is composed purely of descriptions attached to stock photos whose featured model is Ariane, ordered according to popularity as ranked by the stock image website the photos are from. Each tag remains unedited; all typographical errors, redundancies, inconsistencies in punctuation remain intact.