Great picture libraries
June 13, 2019 7:57 PM

I'm looking for recommendations of good picture libraries, preferably royalty-free, Creative Commons-type licencing such as unsplash.com. Also particularly interested in ones that tackle issues of diversity representation such as this one previously featured in an FPP that has images of trans and non-binary people, and this one that has beautiful pictures of black and brown people. Thanks!
posted by KateViolet to Media & Arts (4 answers total) 26 users marked this as a favorite


That was my thread. And I'm a huge fan of the WOCinTech Flickr set mentioned at the end. Depending how much work you want to do, I've had decent luck for racial diversity by searching Picryl for people of color (and be careful to adjust the date sliders because searching for POC in public domain materials is often a really upsetting exercise). Here's an example for "Asian American" limited to 1950 and later. All of these images are nominally public domain, but sometimes I track down the source image just to be sure. You can download the medium and small sizes for free and there's a mandatory donation for high res images. Not as much there for transgender representation for example (a lot of folks at podiums and Barney Frank speaking at a GLBT event) but it can sometimes point you in the direction of other good sources.
posted by jessamyn at 9:15 PM on June 13, 2019


Pixabay is pretty large and can give decent results depending on what you're looking for (eg. a search for African American), although in certain aspects it's still not very diverse (you're not gonna have much luck if you're after trans / non-binary people, for instance).

Pexels can also be alright, even just scrolling down the front page it looks decently diverse.

Neither is deliberately diverse, though.
posted by sailoreagle at 4:22 AM on June 14, 2019


Representation Matters unfortunately isn’t free (except for three random photos they email subscribers every month; the rest are credit-purchasable), but is explicitly focused on inclusion, diversity, social justice, and health at every size.
posted by picopebbles at 5:36 AM on June 14, 2019


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