What are your favorite free resources online for historical images of people, places and things?

Question

Amanda · Answer

Digital Public Library of America: Compiles digitized historical photos, videos, audio and more from libraries and archives across the country. Really fun to peruse!

EmmaJ · Answer

EmmaJ

Analisa Burns · Answer

Smithsonian Open Access Media: how I surf the web for vintage ballet content ✨

Minna Kelly · Answer

The Getty's Open Content Program: Tens of thousands of downloadable, hi-res images from the Getty Museum collections and the Getty Research Institute collections including antiquities, illuminated manuscripts (!), paintings, sculpture, photographs, maps, prints and study images.
Handy FAQ here.

🖼️ Image info: An Allegory of Painting, 1661, Frans van Mieris the Elder. Oil on copper, 5 × 3 1/2 in.

Andrea · Answer

Street View of 1940s New York: Between 1939 and 1941, the Works Progress Administration collaborated with the New York City Tax Department to collect photographs of most buildings in the five boroughs of New York City. In 2018, the NYC Municipal Archives completed the digitization and tagging of these photos. This website places them on a map.

Louise Buckley · Answer

Public Domain Image Archive: Images free for all to browse, download, and reuse. Living database with new images added every week.

Evan McAvenia · Answer

historic american building survey, library of congress: if you’re looking for some really gorgeous place based imagery, this is your spot. habs/haer/hals are incredible programs and they have created a remarkable and fun visual archive of the country!

Evan McAvenia · Answer

calisphere: my holy grail for ca archival imagery. it leans academic, but you can find so many amazing things and such a range of historic images. it will also link out to finding aids and archives if you need in person access!

AMB · Answer

Are.na: This isn’t a direct link to free pictures, scans, fonts, and other digital resources (so it may not be exactly what you are looking for). However, this app does have multiple user-made collections for those type of categories that may help you with any design related projects. There are collections of links for archives, museums, historical records, stickers, postcards, etc. that you may like to explore and bookmark.

bella · Answer

Grrrlhood - Digital Exhibition: The Museum of Youth Culture is a project i’ve been eyeing for years now. They’ve been posting really delightful online exhibitions that I’ve been eating up. Mostly contemporary at this point but there are some historical gems.