Where Do You Find Images for Collage?
Gatekeeping? I don’t know her! In honor of World Collage Day on May 10, I’m spilling the tea on image sourcing.
I’ll be real with you, finding the right images can be a bit of a treasure hunt. But it’s a fun one!
Where do you find images for collage?
Since my work is both analog and digital, I use a mix of physical and digital media. (H/T: even if you like to work by hand, some of the online resources could apply if you print things out).
Pt 1: Physical Media
Physical media includes all types of paper ephemera like magazines, pamphlets, postcards, greeting cards, ticket stubs, books and more. I find these at…
Flea Markets
Antique Stores
Auction Houses
Used Book Stores
Estate Sales
Yard Sales/Garage Sales
Online Resellers (i.e. eBay, Etsy)
Pt 2: Digital Media
Welcome to the rabbit hole that is searching for digital images! You never really know what you’re going to get, but these are my go-to starting points. Note: sometimes with digital images, especially vintage ones, image quality can be low. If you can, try sorting by a larger size to suit your use-case.
Flickr: The Commons: Flickr partnered with the Library of Congress to share public domain photos from photography archives.
The Public Domain Image Archive: A hand-picked collection of 10,046 out-of-copyright works.
NASA (yes, that NASA): Most images NASA shares are in the public domain. There are some exceptions which you can read more about on their guidelines page.
Wikimedia Commons: The site touts a collection of “118,467,028 freely usable media files”. When you use the search feature, be sure to toggle “license” to ensure the image has no restrictions.
The Met Collection: The Met Museum offers 406,000 hi-res images of public-domain works, all of which can be downloaded, shared, and remixed without restriction. You can learn more about their open access works here.
The New York Public Library: Over 200,000 public domain items have been digitized in the NYPL’s collection. Note: you need to check the box that says “Search only public domain” when browsing their collection.
Modern Stock Photography Sites: Sometimes I use modern images and make them look vintage by applying effects in Photoshop. My go-to sites are: Unsplash, Pexels, and Adobe Stock.
Pt. 3: What’s the copyright situation for collage art?
This is a loaded question as collage is essentially artwork composed of found objects. All work created should be done so in a “transformative” manner, meaning the work is changed significantly from its original state. So much so that it does not infringe on its initial copyright.
As of 2025, all works published in 1929 or earlier are in the public domain. And according to copyright.gov, “for most works created after 1978, protection lasts for the life of the author plus 70 years”.
I personally have a few rules for myself:
I try to stick to using Creative Commons images. CC imagery is free use to the public and holds no copyright.
I alter designs in a “transformative” manner.
I never use current images unless they are from a stock image site that specifies free use, or I have paid for the rights.
