Shreya Bhosale

The results of these searches on Google Images give us a selection of images based on what is already available, widely circulated and searchable online, as well as what it predicts users are likely to want from that search.

The searches for “teacher” and “CEO” are quite telling. They are dominated by professionally produced, posed or stock photographs rather than photographs of actual teachers or CEOs going about their work. These are images designed to be inserted into presentations, websites, articles, assignments etc. So Google Images is responding not only to the meaning of the search term but moreto the way people commonly use image search: to find a generic visual representation that can be reproduced or reused, commercially or otherwise.

The results for “terrorist” reveal a different problem. Mostimages are associated with terrorism by Islamists, and a number of them are book covers rather than photographs of particular terrorist acts or individuals. Somewhat showing the associations that have accumulated around the word whether through news media, publishing, political imagery or pop culture. So its obvious that it is not just that Google is “biased”, but that a search engine can reproduce and reinforce associations that are already dominant in the material it indexes. If a particular image or association has been repeatedly produced and circulated online, it becomes more likely to appear as a representation of the concept.

“Beautiful woman” works in another way. The results are largely women who are already socially established as beautiful, particularly celebrities such as Deepika Padukone, Priyanka Chopra, Zendaya and Margot Robbie. The search seems to retrieve women who are already highly visible and repeatedly represented online as beautiful. Beauty becomes tied to celebrity, popularity and cultural recognition. An ordinary woman who may be considered beautiful by the people around her is unlikely to appear simply because she is beautiful. And again, what is beauty? What are the definitions?

All in all, these searches show that Google Images is obviously not a neutral window into the world. It is shaped by what people (which?) photograph, publish, label, circulate and search for, and by the algorithmic systems that rank those materials. Telling us as much about the internet and its users as they do about the words being searched. Google Images does not show us reality; it shows us the representations of reality that have the most visibility, usage and searchable online.

Hello y’all!
I am Shreya, working at the intersection of architecture, archives and decolonising colonial history of Pune. Over the course of the last few months I have been engaging with photographs taken in colonial contexts of the early 20th century. This series of lectures has been very indulging and has triggered some wonderful lines of thought.
Great to meet the other responders here! Your work and backgrounds sound intriguing! Hope to connect.