Green River LibGuides: ENGL 161 Cultures of Desire: Finding Images Online

Link to Art Images

Related Guide

For many more resources on Art Images, check out the Tab Finding Art Images in the Fine Arts Subject Guide.

Fine Arts
by Amanda Chin Last Updated Oct 2, 2024 116 views this year

Museums, Archives & Collections

Museum of Modern Art Photography
National Geographic Photography
NY Public Library Digital Photography Collection
Photo Center NW
Photo.net Gallery
Library of Congress: Digital Collections - Photos, Prints, Drawing
Include photographs, fine and popular prints and drawings, posters, and architectural and engineering drawings documenting the history of the United States and the lives, interests and achievements of the American people.

Searching Online: Search Tips

To find images in museums online, type in the domain site:.museum.

Select images. Then type in your keyword, for example: Courtly Love

By adding "site:.museum" to your search, it tells the search engine to look for images of Courtly Love in a museum website.
Here is one example:

I love how it looks like St. George has climbed down off his horse to woo the maiden.

Wikimedia Commons

Wikimedia Commons Images

Wikimedia Commons contains, according to the site, a collection of over 58 million freely usable media files to which anyone can contribute."Files include images, audio, video, animations, maps, and other multimedia. Users can choose from multiple images sizes when downloading, and each image is often accompanied by information about the work depicted as well as copyright information.

Wikimedia Commons
Wikimedia Commons is a growing collection of freely usable media files to which anyone can contribute.
Wikimedia Reuse Guide
This simple guide will take you through the process of using the millions of high resolution photos on Wikimedia Commons which are free of charge to use, including for commercial use. This guide also applies to the other media (e.g audio and video) found on the website.

Image Source: "PNG logo with text" by Wikimedia Foundation is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0

Flicker Commons

Using Flickr Commons

"The key goals of The Commons on Flickr are to firstly show you hidden treasures in the world's public photography archives, and secondly to show how your input and knowledge can help make these collections even richer."

Flickr: The Commons
The key goal of The Commons is to share hidden treasures from the world's public photography archives.

Giving credit

Thanks to Sarah Christensen, Visual Resources Curator at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana and Jesse Hendersen, Visual Resources Curator at Colgate University, for graciously allowing me to copy text and other information from their library web pages.

Images and copyright

Images and Fair Use

Images are intellectual property, too, and you need to give credit for them as you would textual information. Here are things to keep in mind when using images downloaded from the internet:

Always credit the source of your images.
Find out if the owner/creator of an image states how their image can be used, if possible.
Whenever possible, ask the copyright holder for permission and keep a record of this correspondence.

Under fair use guidelines, you may...

Use images in course assignments such as a term paper, thesis or poster as per their degree fulfillment requirements.
Publicly display images incorporated in academic work when association with courses in which they are enrolled.
Retain work in personal portfolios for use in graduate school or employment applications, for example.

And you may not...

Publish images in any work in analog or digital form that do not have proper copyright clearance. When in doubt, consult the Four Factors of Fair Use.

Information above used with permission from the Colgate Visual Resources Library

Colgate Visual Resources Library: Digital Images and Copyright