Photography: A Research Guide: Image Sources

The Mellon Teaching Set, History of Photography, presents images from the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art and Cornell University Library collections to introduce "photography’s expansive and complex technological, cultural, and aesthetic histories"

Includes a "Visual Resources" section with image galleries, thematic photographic galleries, video, and exhibitions.

Includes a "Visual Sources" section with an image gallery, 360 object gallery, early cinema footage, and optical toys filmed in action.

Includes an image gallery of illustrations, photographs & maps.

Includes a "Visual Resources" section with visual galleries and online exhibitions.

JSTOR is a growing digital library that includes multiple types and formats of content. Artstor images have now moved into JSTOR, to create a robust platform for discovering and working with both text and images. Images from Artstor collections can now be found in JSTOR, and JSTOR platform features and functionality have evolved to support work with multiple formats of research materials.

Search JSTOR for images

You can only download if you register for an account, which you'll need to do on campus. After you have an account, you can login from anywhere. More information and help in using JSTOR images.

The library subscribes to or has built a number of image databases that are excellent sources of downloadable images. Keep in mind that some of them have licensing restrictions that prohibit the re-publication (including open web publishing, such as on a blog or on social networking sites) of images you download. 

Get help with digital images

Nineteenth Century Collections Online :
Photography, the World Through the Lens
a broad range of primary sources including a variety of material types.
Assembles collections of photographs, photograph albums, photographically illustrated books and texts on the early history of photography from libraries and archives from across the globe.

Images of the American Civil War : Photographs, posters, and ephemera
Thousands of dramatic images from the fields of battle, the home front, politics, and general society allow students and researchers to experience and bear witness to the events, both monumental and mundane, of the war that tested and defined the core meaning of America. The database currently holds over 12,200 images.

Fashion Photography Archive
Contains more than 750,000 newly-digitzed and high-quality runway, backstage, and street style images*
— curated by Editor-in-Chief Valerie Steele, Director of the Museum at FIT in New York

RIBAPix
Exceptional and unique images from the collections of the British Architectural Library at the Royal Institute of British Architects, the world's most extensive visual archive devoted to architecture. RIBApix covers world architecture of all periods together with related subjects such as interior design, landscape, topography, planning, construction and the decorative arts.

SEAiT: South East Asian images & texts project
Digital archive of historical photography for Southeast Asia, drawing scattered historical photographs into a single accessible source. The archive incorporates elements from a broad spectrum of social sciences, including history, geography, anthropology and political science.

Media History Digital Library (not really a photo database like the others listed here)
Contains digital scans of media periodicals and fan magazines from 1904 to 1963. Also features the histories of film, broadcasting, and recorded sound. Highlights for historians of photography: the early cinema collection and the magic lantern and lantern slide catalog collection.