About the Project
The Public Domain Image Archive (PDIA) — brought to you by The Public Domain Review (PDR) — is a curated collection of more than 10,000 out-of-copyright historical images, free for all to explore and reuse. Our aim is to offer a platform that will serve both as a practical resource and a place to simply wander — an ever-growing portal to discover more than 2000 years of visual culture.
A valuable image archive in its own right, offering hand-picked highlights from hundreds of galleries, libraries, archives, and museums, the PDIA also functions as a database of images featured in the PDR, offering an image-first approach to exploring the project’s content. The featured images each link to the relevant article on the PDR where one can read about the stories which surround the works. Visitors in search of more context will also find links back to the institutions where we found the image — from small college libraries to national repositories.
We intend the archive to be a place of discovery, and to this end have developed various “views” to aid exploration: i) catalogue view, to search and browse by theme, style, date, and more; ii) infinite view, for a more immersive experience of the collection; and iii) shuffle view, a tool to easily summon images in a serendipitous manner. And with more ways to visualise the collection to come.
We bring this project to you entirely for free as we believe in a cultural commons where public domain works are accessible to all. It is, however, a costly undertaking. With no external funding or intrusive advertising, the existence of the Public Domain Image Archive relies on the generous support of its users. If you’d like to see it continue, please do make a donation. Another way of supporting the project is to buy one of our prints.
Below you’ll find answers to common queries. Feel free to reach out on [email protected] if you’ve still got questions.
Where are the images from?
The material on the PDIA originates from more than 200 source institutions — a global array of galleries, libraries, archives, and museums who have made digitised public domain works from their collections free to reuse, even commercially. You can see the full list at this page (including an accompanying “Open Ranking” score for each).
The versions of the images you encounter on the PDIA will most often have been through a careful editing process by our team: be that small tweaks to enhance the image for presentation (e.g. rotation, exposure levels) or cropping from book scans to isolate illustrations that don’t otherwise exist online as stand-alone images.
How have you chosen what images to feature?
The PDIA collates images that are featured on the PDR, either as illustrations to essays, as subject of collection posts, or as prints for sale in the online shop. As such, these are all images that tap into the spirit of the PDR project: to celebrate the surprising, the strange, and the beautiful in the history of art, literature, and ideas. However, not every image from the PDR is here — in keeping with our mission, we have included only those images that we are confident may be reused without question for any purpose.
What does it mean for an image to be in the public domain?
Creative works that are not protected by copyright are said to be in the “public domain”, a vast commons of material that everyone is free to enjoy, share, and build upon without needing to gain permission or pay fees. While works can be dedicated to the public domain, most are in the public domain because they are old enough for their copyrights to have expired. However, different countries and jurisdictions have varying laws about how and when copyright expires, meaning there exist, in effect, many public domains. An image may be out-of-copyright in one country but not in another.
Further to this, historical public domain works are encountered online in the form of digital copies. While a work may be copyright free, the digital copy can sometimes be subject to additional claims of copyright (or restrictions applied to its use). We deem such activity nefarious but thankfully there are plenty of institutions who keep works in the public domain when they go online and it's from these institutions that we source our images. The images featured on PDIA have no additional claims of rights from either us or the source institutions.
For more, see this simple explainer housed at the PDR.
Can I use the images I find on PDIA for commercial projects?
In most cases, yes. While the vast majority of our images are deemed by us to be out-of-copyright the world over, and with no restrictions on usage, you should be aware of some exceptions relating to jurisdiction (for example, being only in the US public domain) and also attribution requirements. For each image, we relay to the best of our knowledge the rights status of both the underlying work (detailing the relevant region/copyright term) and the digital copy of this work (detailing if any attribution is required). We provide this information based on a basic knowledge of copyright law and the status communicated by the source institution — it is strictly meant as a guideline and it should not be taken as legal advice. We admit no responsibility for any untoward consequences that may arise through reuse of material featured on our site. If you are requiring certainty as to usage rights, then you are encouraged to check with the source institution and make your own investigations.
If I am sharing or reusing an image do I need to mention you as the source?
If sharing or reusing images found on our site, then you are under no obligation to mention us, but we would really appreciate a mention and link back if practicable. Every credit and link back to our site helps grow our audience and continue the project. If you are able, please do also consider supporting us with a donation.
Where is the metadata from?
The metadata accompanying the images comes from a variety of sources. For standalone artworks, basic metadata such as artist name, date, and artwork title, is usually derived from the source institution. For images we’ve extracted from public domain books, this basic metadata is gleaned by our team based on information present in the book. In instances where an image does not have an obvious title, in order to aid findability in the archive, we have decided to not leave this field empty, instead including either a descriptive placeholder or to use “From Book Title”. The metadata relating to the source and associated rights status of the work, have been assigned by our team based on information given by the source institution and a basic knowledge of copyright law. The metadata under “themes”, “styles”, and “tags” have been created by our team. If you notice anything that looks awry, please do get in touch at [email protected]. In order to ensure against the copying of our site for commercial endeavours, bar the images themselves, all metadata is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.
Am I able to gain access to higher-resolution versions of images I find on PDIA?
While we are now in the practice of uploading images at the highest resolution available to us, this hasn’t always been the case. Most of our small images (below 1500 pixels on the longest edge) are from the early days of the PDR project when we did not feature full-sized images on the site. We plan to update these over time with bigger versions, but for now you may be able to find a higher-res version by following the link through to the original source. Please don’t email us asking for higher-res copies, we’ve put the best we have on the site!
Can I buy prints of the images I see on PDIA?
All the images of requisite size and permissions, around a fifth of the total, are available to buy as prints. We've been selling prints through the shop over on the PDR since 2017, and utilise the same network of trusted print studio partners for prints bought through the PDIA. However, many thousands more images are available here than the curated selection you'll find on the PDR. If an image is suitable to be printed, it will display a "Buy a Print" button on the image page. See this page for all images that are available to buy as prints, or you can gain an approximation by using the sort tool in the main catalogue view to order by “Size: Largest to smallest”.
Please note that, unlike for our PDR prints shop, images on the PDIA haven’t all been checked for print suitability beyond a simple assessment based on their size. Most will have been enhanced for presentation on the web, and will make beautiful prints, but all the same it is worth double-checking the image shown to make sure it is to your liking.
How is the PDIA funded?
We are funded by our community of users. With no external funding or intrusive advertising, the existence of the Public Domain Image Archive relies on the generous support of those that use it. If you’d like to see it continue, please do make a donation. The project is run by The Public Domain Review which is registered in the UK as a Community Interest Company (#11386184), a category of company that exists primarily to benefit a community or with a view to pursuing a social purpose, with all profits having to be used for this purpose.