Image License & Reuse
Every photograph in this archive is in the public domain. You can download it, use it, sell it, and change it. There is no fee, no account, and no licence to apply for.
Why these are public domain
The photographs collected here were published in the United States before 1930. Under United States law, works published before 1930 are in the public domain, and copyright cannot be restored to them. Digitising a public-domain photograph does not create a new copyright in the image either, which is why a scan of an 1888 portrait is as free as the print it was made from.
Many of these scans reach us through aggregators that attach a standard rights notice to everything they distribute, regardless of the age of the underlying work. Where a source archive has supplied such a statement, it is reproduced verbatim in the Rights & Attribution block on that photograph’s page, so you can read it and judge for yourself. If you are making a commercial use and the stakes are high, read it before you rely on this page.
What you may do
- Download the full-resolution file and keep it.
- Print it, frame it, or sell the print.
- Use it in a book, article, film, documentary, album cover or exhibition.
- Use it commercially, including in advertising and merchandise.
- Crop, retouch, colorize, or otherwise alter it.
- Republish it on your own site, with or without a link back.
What we ask
None of this is a legal condition. The public domain has no conditions. These are the things that make the archive better for everyone who uses it next.
- Credit the holding institution when you can. Every portrait page lists its source archive and links to the original record. It costs you a line and it helps the archives that digitised this material justify doing more of it.
- Do not claim the original photograph as your own work. The public domain means nobody owns it, not that you do.
- Do not present a colorized version as the historical original. Where this archive offers one, it is labelled as a modern reconstruction, and that label should travel with the file.
How to credit
Each portrait page carries a credit line from its source archive. When there isn’t one, this form is enough:
{Title}, {year}. {Source archive}. Public domain, via Portraits of America.Andrew Harrell, Visalia, California, 1888. Tulare County Library, via Internet Archive. Public domain, via Portraits of America.Resolution and quality
The download button on each portrait page serves the largest file the archive holds, exactly as received from the source institution, with no watermark and no downsampling. Pixel dimensions are printed next to the button so you know what you are getting before you click. These are scans of century-old prints and negatives, so grain, foxing, scratches and uneven contrast are part of the object rather than faults in the file.
Something wrong?
If you hold rights in an image here, if a rights statement has been recorded incorrectly, or if you can correct a caption, a date or an identification, tell us and it will be fixed or removed. Get in touch.