The "everywhere Girl" Phenomenon

There are many sites where you can post your photos for resale to corporations, advertisers, and other publishers of magazines, newsletters, and web content. One photographer, Douglas Menuez, has made a small fortune with a few shots he took in 1998 and listed on Getty Images. He took some posed pictures of a young woman, Jennifer Chandra, in front of an American college, Reed College in Portland, Orgeon.

There is nothing spectacular about his images, they are just an average looking student, wearing a wool cap, in front of the old college building.

But those images have been picked up and published dozens of times by major corporations, and many other businesses, worldwide, for use in advertisements, brochures, and web sites.

The Everywhere Girl Phenomenon was basically created by a technical newsletter, called The Inquirer, which is published daily and provides short notes about happenings in the computer and telecommunications area. One editor noticed that a photo of the same female student was used by two computer manufacturers at the same time. He wrote about it in a newsletter article, calling her “The Everywhere Girl”, and soon people...