Licences and sources

Find Any Photo indexes only photos whose archive record says they are in the public domain, and it shows you why for every photo. This page explains what that means and where its limits are.

Sources

• Library of Congress collections (via Wikimedia Commons)

  The Bain News Service, National Photo Company, Harris & Ewing and Detroit Publishing Company collections, the Farm Security Administration / Office of War Information photographs, the U.S. News & World Report collection, the Carol M. Highsmith Archive and more. The Library of Congress lists these with no known restrictions on publication, and volunteers copied them to Wikimedia Commons with their catalogue records. We read the photo's licence from its Commons file page and link to it.

• US government photographers (via Wikimedia Commons)

  Photos taken by employees of the US federal government as part of their work, such as Army Signal Corps, Navy and Air Force photographers, are not protected by copyright in the United States (17 U.S.C. 105). Many come from the National Archives.

• NASA Image and Video Library

  NASA's own photos of launches, astronauts, spacecraft, aircraft and Earth from space. NASA material is generally not subject to copyright in the United States. We leave out photos credited to a partner agency (such as ESA, which licenses its own copies under CC BY 4.0) or a company, and photos marked as copyrighted or courtesy of someone else. NASA asks that its material is not used to imply endorsement.

Rules for what gets indexed

• Only files whose page carries a public-domain or CC0 licence are indexed.
• Files that also carry a Creative Commons BY or BY-SA licence, or a GFDL licence, are left out, even when they have a public-domain tag too. In our test this was about 1 file in 200, usually a modern photo of an old building or artwork: the building is public domain, the photo of it isn't.
• Files nominated for deletion on Commons, or missing their licence or source, are left out.
• Prints, posters, drawings, maps and documents are tagged, so “Photographs only” can leave them out.

The “Safest licences” filter

Some photos are public domain because of their publication history: published in the US without a copyright notice before 1978, or never renewed. Wikimedia Commons volunteers research these, and they are usually right, but the proof rests on records you would have to check. The Safest filter keeps only the plainest cases:

Published before 1931

Works published in the US before 1931 entered the public domain by January 1, 2026.

US government work

Made by a federal employee on the job: no US copyright at all.

Collections given without restrictions

Bain, National Photo Company, Harris & Ewing, Detroit Publishing, U.S. News & World Report and Highsmith: the Library of Congress holds them with no known restrictions on publication.

CC0

Dedicated to the public domain by the rights holder.

What “public domain” covers, and what it doesn't

A public-domain photo can be copied, edited and used commercially without permission or payment. The archive's record is good evidence, but it isn't a guarantee, and the rules differ outside the United States. A photo can also show things that have their own rights: a recognisable person (whose likeness can matter in advertising), a trademark, or an artwork. For advertising or merchandise, check with the archive or a clearance service. Our terms say this in full.

Credit lines

Public-domain photos don't legally require credit, but the archives ask for it and it helps anyone checking your work later. Every photo page has a credit line to copy, and in Claude the credits tool writes them for a whole set.

Report a problem

If you hold rights in a photo we index, or a licence record looks wrong, email legal@wikivec.com with the photo's link. We take photos out of the index while we check.