InfoGuides: History of Graphic Design: Find Images

Images for Research and Classroom Use

ARTstor
Contains over a million images documenting artistic traditions across many cultures and time periods. Updated frequently, please check back often for updated searches & collections. Note: ARTstor users must create a free account to save and share images. Users must turn off the popup blocker.
View a tutorial on this database here.
AP Images
Collects historical and contemporary imagery from Associated Press with a 50 million image print and negative archive including graphics and audio clips.
View a tutorial on this database here.

Images for Creative Re-Use

If you're working on an artistic or creative project (whether for personal or professional/commercial uses), you may want to find images to remix, collage, or repurpose in other ways.

These sites provide public domain or creative commons images, but be sure to verify the images' copyright status or license terms before using in your non-classroom or academic project.

Creative Commons
Search for Creative Commons-licensed images, including images available for commercial uses or for remix/creative reuse.
Wikimedia Commons
A collection of 35,137,374 freely usable media files
loc.gov
Many of the images in the Library of Congress' Prints, Photographs, and Drawings division are in the public domain and available for use.
Flickr: the Commons
Images from public photography archives from both US and International institutions. Good for historic photographs of people and places.
Academic Images
Good resource for researchers and scholars. This blog highlights museum and other institutional collections that make their image collections available for researchers and academic publishing.

Contemporary Photographic Collections

International Center for Photography - Collections
ICP's collections include > 200,000 prints and related materials that range from the earliest forms of photography to contemporary work.
NYPL Picture Collection
New York Public Library Online Picture Collection has more than 30,000 digitized images, mostly created before 1923.