Stock photographs as an area of transformation of image, in the perspective of truth, reality and simulation discussions

The effort of human that is able to transfer his environment has increased with the paintings on the cave walls to the invention of writing, has continued with the development of art of painting and invention of the photography. After the age of transition from realistic paintings to the real photographs, the developments on the press techniques has made the need of photography increased, and also mediated to increase the effect of photography on the written and the visual world. Advertising sector verged to new seekings by transforming itself with the parallel of the developments of press and photography in last decade. It is inevitable these two purviews to become integral part of the whole with convergence of advertising sector and photography that are witness of fluctuation. In this context, growing demand to the photographs leads photography to answer the needs with the stock photography. Photograph which was produced for the specific purposes, gave place to prefabricated photograph stacks which can serve multiple purposes. From this point of view, major issue of this work is transformation of image to a symbolic variation on the representation level because of using prefabricated image, which is got into circulation with the stock photography, instead of image of original on the presentation of a fact. In addition, the transformation of the images in which take place stock photographs from indicative indicator to the empty indicative in our universe of simulation is also one of the major issues of this work. In analysis part, most popular photographs of the most visited websites of three (shutterstock.com, 123rf.com and istockphoto.com) were analyzed by the semiotic analysis method. In this work, it was came through that stock photography –naturally- has no organic link between the image which is reflected, and undergoes a change imaginary on the plane of real-truth.