Free Public Domain Image Resources for Writers, Artists, and Creators that I Love and Use in My Own Work
Because there is literally never a good reason to use AI to create images
If you’re using generative AI to create images to accompany your articles, or for social media, or god forbid, to make art to sell, I have news for you: there is literally no reason for you to do this! It cheapens your work and steals from other artists and creators. Luckily, there are any resources out there that you can use, full of public domain and out of copyright art and images just waiting to be used and remixed. I’ve put together a little list of the five resources I use most often in my own work: to illustrate articles, to use for collage and art projects, and to create stickers and other ephemera for my tiny journaling shop.
(btw each title is a link that takes you directly to a public domain search)
Public Domain Image Archive
The Public Domain Image Archive is a production of the Public Domain review and is a collection of over 10,000 public domain images. All of the images are free to use and reuse as you see fit. I especially love this archive for witchy and occult images and also really love the amount of medieval woodcut images available.
Metropolitan Museum of Art Open Access
This is an, at times, overwhelming resource, with nearly 500,000 public domain images available. Content ranges from masterpieces from Van Gogh and Monet to full color photos of armor from the Middle Ages. This is a great place to start if you’re looking for high quality images of fine art. The search engine also has lots of filters to fine tune your search.
Wellcome Collection
The Wellcome Collection is a free library and museum in London with a collection focus on materials related to health and medicine, including nearly 75,000 public domain images available to access, download, and use/reuse. I highly recommend this resource for antique anatomy images, old pharmaceutical labels and advertising, and historical hospital images. It also has a pretty robust category related to Death/memento mori.
Cooper Hewitt
Cooper Hewitt is the Smithsonian Design Museum and is dedicated to historical and contemporary design. Its public domain archive is great for images of furniture, jewelry, textiles, and wallpaper, and has over 43,000 images available. I especially use this one for images to use for backgrounds and textures in collages or remixed art projects. Searching for public domain images can be a little tricky on their site, but to do so, just search for a topic or theme and then on the side bar check off “no known copyright”.
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress’ Free to Use and Reuse sets are another resource I use frequently. There are about 100 themed sets full of historical graphics, photos, artwork, and more. Some of my favorite sets are Hats, Autumn & Halloween and Not an Ostrich (which is a sampler of unique photos from the exhibition "Not an Ostrich: And Other Images from America’s Library.")
So seriously, stop using generative AI and tap into the public domain. Your work and those who view it will thank you.