Icon Key
- collection contains some (but not necessarily all) resources in the public domain
- collection contains some (but not necessarily all) resources covered by at least one type of Creative Commons license
- the resource is free and open software (also known as FOSS) meaning that anyone can use, copy, or change as desired
- Pratt Institute resource
Image and Photo Resources
The resources on this page will connect you to various repositories of images and photos from across the web including those in the public domain and/or covered by Creative Commons licenses. In addition, the following resource guide can help you find additional public domain images:
UC Santa Cruz: How to Find Public Domain Images Guide
High resolution, stock photos, vectors, and videos searchable and browsable via curated collections and available to use for commercial purposes. A limited number of free downloads are available using your Adobe Creative Cloud account or there are paid options.
Thousands of photos with captions, credits, and resolutions to view and use including people, scenery, arctic research stations, and historical photos.
Within the Associated Press' vast collection of historical and contemporary news and lifestyle photography, there are collections of royalty-free stock images and rights-managed photos available for download.
British Library Digital Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts
A searchable database of western medieval and Renaissance illuminated manuscripts hosted by the British Library.
Fisher Fine Arts Library Zotero Open Access + Public Domain Collections
Zotero resource list with links to various digital collections of open access and public domain art compiled by staff at Fisher Fine Arts Library, University of Pennsylvania.
A collection of artwork mostly in the public domain with corresponding artist biographies.
From Old BooksHigh resolution scans of images from antiquarian books available for download.
More than 10,000 images from the Getty Museum and Research Institute available through the Open Content Program. Includes paintings, drawings, manuscripts, photographs, antiquities, sculpture, decorative arts, artists' sketchbooks, watercolors, rare prints from the 16th through the 18th century, and 19th-century architectural drawings of cultural landmarks.
Images from museums all over the world including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Tate Britian, the MFA, Boston, and the J. Paul Getty Museum.
Their library contains 14 million images including photographs, historical prints, posters, cartoons, documentary drawings, fine prints, and architectural and engineering designs. While international in scope, the collections are particularly strong in materials documenting the history of the United States and the lives, interests, and achievements of the American people.
Site links to various online collections of public domain images from the British Museum to NASA.
An expansive collection of images, videos, and visualizations from the Hubble telescope including planets, stars, nebulae, galaxies, and more.
Collection of images, video, and visualizations from the James Webb Telescope, the world’s largest and most powerful space telescope.
NASA James Webb Telescope on Flickr
Larger collection of images, video, and visualizations about and by the James Webb Telescope, the world’s largest and most powerful space telescope.
National Park Services Multimedia
Multimedia of and about National Park Service sites including national parks, monuments, battlefields, and historic sites. The collection is searchable by keyword, location, or file type (including photos, videos, audio, webcams, and podcasts).
New York Public Library Digital Gallery
NYPL Digital Gallery provides free and open online access to hundreds of thousands of images from the original and rare holdings of the library. Spanning a wide range of historical eras, geography, and visual media, it offers digital images of drawings, illuminated manuscripts, maps, photographs, posters, prints, rare illustrated books, and more.
- OldNYC
The site provides an alternative way of browsing the NYPL's Photographic Views of New York City, 1870s-1970s collection. Find photos in the collection via a map view. -
NYPL Public Domain Collections
Over 180,000 items in NYPL's Digital Collections are in the public domain and are available for high resolution download. They created several tools, projects, and explorations designed to inspire your own creations. - Public Domain Visualization
This "domain remix" was created to help patrons understand and explore what is in the NYPL Public Domain Collections. The visualization can be sorted by century collected, color, genre, or collection.
Northwestern University Libraries Digital Collections
These digital collections contain thousands of items from Northwestern University Libraries. While only a fraction of materials from the Libraries' collections are represented, the site is representative of the distinction and diversity of collections from the Northwestern Government and Geographic Information collection, Herskovits Library of African Studies, Music Library, McCormick Library of Special Collections, Transportation Library, and University Archives.
-
The World War II Poster Collection
Northwestern University hosts more than 300 World War II-era posters issued by various U.S. government agencies. They represent the government's effort, through art, illustration and photographs, to unite the American people in a time of adversity.
Illustrations scanned from old books. Images include wood engravings or woodcuts, etchings, and metal engravings.
A free stock photo and video website and app. Photos and videos can be downloaded and used for free (even for commercial purposes), and attribution is not required, but always appreciated.
Pratt Libraries LibGuide: Images and Image Collections for Teaching
Image resources collected by Pratt Libraries for teaching and learning. Includes links and instructions on how to access the school's special collections and archives and Pratt's Picture File Collection as well as external sites.
This page lists resources for high-quality public domain photographs. For each resource here, I tell you what you’ll find and give you tips for using the photos.
A visual search engine that pull images from across the web with the "same energy" - matching theme, style, composition, etc..
High resolution, free images and photos that can be used with attribution.
A collection of images mostly covering the American Civil war. Primary source material comes from books published from as early as 1842 up to 1922.
U.S. National Archives (on flickr)
A sampling of the more than 25 million photographs and 20,000 graphic images (posters and some original artwork) held in roughly 2,500 series at the U.S. National Archives in the Washington, D.C., area, regional archives facilities from coast to coast, and from the twelve Presidential Libraries under U.S. National Archives administration.
One of the largest collections of videos and audio material relating to human and animal health and welfare across the twentieth century. Searchable by usage license type.
A media file repository making available public domain and freely-licensed educational media content (images, sound and video clips) to everyone, in their own language. It acts as a common repository for the various projects of the Wikimedia Foundation.