We’ve usually fea­tured the work of the Pub­lic Domain Review right here on Open Cul­ture, and likewise var­i­ous search­in a position copy­right-free picture knowledge­bas­es which have arisen over time. It is sensible that these two worlds would col­lide, and now they’ve accomplished so within the type of the just-launched Pub­lic Domain Image Archive (PDIA). The Pub­lic Area Overview invitations us to make use of the site to “discover our hand-picked col­lec­tion of 10,046 out-of-copy­right works, free for all to browse, down­load, and reuse” — and observe that the num­ber will develop, giv­en that “this can be a liv­ing knowledge­base with new photographs added each week.”

As with all por­tal of this sort, you may browse by cat­e­go­ry tags, the selec­tion of which incorporates each­factor from archi­tec­ture to dec­o­ra­tions to occultism to war. However for those who’d prefer to get a way of the sheer for­mal, aes­thet­ic, cul­tur­al, and his­tor­i­cal vari­ety of the PDIA, you may con­sid­er tak­ing a primary look by way of its “infi­nite view,” which lets you scroll in all direc­tions by way of a lim­it­much less labyrinth of copy­right-free gained­ders: adver­tise­ments, Bib­li­cal scenes, old-time sports­men, out­er-space pho­tos, mush­rooms, medieval musi­cal crea­tures, let­ter­forms, and, effectively, labyrinths.

You may additionally rec­og­nize gadgets you’ve seen right here on Open Cul­ture earlier than, just like the nature draw­ings of Ernst Haeck­el, the mod­ern art-lam­poon­ing chil­dren’s ebook The Cubies’ ABC, or the ghosts and mon­sters illus­trat­ed by ukiyo‑e mas­ter Hoku­sai. The PDIA professional­vides extra con­textual content than some pub­lic-domain picture archives, even hyperlink­ing to rel­e­vant Pub­lic Area Overview posts, the place you may examine such high­ics as Emi­ly Noyes Vanderpoel’s col­or analy­sis charts (which additionally impressed a post of ours), the end of books (as pre­dict­ed in 1894), and even “Cats and Cap­tions before the Inter­net Age.” Hav­ing fall­en into the pub­lic area, all this mate­r­i­al is, in fact, avail­in a position to make use of for any pur­pose you want — includ­ing simply sat­is­fy­ing your personal curios­i­ty.

Relat­ed com­ments:

The New York Pub­lic Library Presents an Archive of 860,000 His­tor­i­cal Images: Down­load Medieval Man­u­scripts, Japan­ese Prints, William Blake Illus­tra­tions & More

A Search Engine for Find­ing Free, Pub­lic Domain Images from World-Class Muse­ums

The British Library Puts Over 1,000,000 Images in the Pub­lic Domain: A Deep­er Dive Into the Col­lec­tion

Public.Work: A Smooth­ly Search­able Archive of 100,000+ “Copy­right-Free” Images

Sea-Ser­pents, Vam­pires, Pirates & More: The Pub­lic Domain Review’s Sec­ond Book of Essays

Primarily based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His tasks embody the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the ebook The State­much less Metropolis: a Stroll by way of Twenty first-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social internet­work for­mer­ly generally known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.