Closing Thoughts
The Gaps
As I hinted at in the title of the workshop, using these techniques, you should be able to find almost any copyright free media on your given subject. The exception to the rule are people of regular means before the invention of the handheld camera in the 1880s, and people towards the end of the twenty first century.
Why the latter? The expansion of copyright law and the lack of camera phones has created a real gap in the historical record for people most active in the 1970s through the turn of the century. In the last twenty years, the accessibility of camera technology and greater overall familiarity with copyright law has influenced people (who have an interest in being seen) to license photos of themselves in the creative commons.
In this interactive visualization I created for the digital encyclopedia BlackPast, I was asked to source photos of around 150 Black classicist scholars from all over the world over the past 130 years. Most often, the most difficult people to find were active during this 1970-2000 period.
An additional factor to this gap may also be digital initiatives, where universities, cultural institutions and libraries choose to digitize older collections in their archives, rather than from this more contemporary period, because they are seen as being at a higher risk of deterioration.
Why Use a Copyright Image When There’s Google?
With this in mind, if you do find yourself tempted to use a copyright protected image of a celebrity, athlete or musician that was active during one of these more fallow periods, I find it helpful to ask myself:
- How many people do not know what this person looks like? and
- What will the inclusion of this person’s photo add for the reader and is there another kind of media that will provide the same context?
Additional Viewing
If you would like to learn more about copyright, major media conglomerates and public access to history, I would highly recommend watching A History Of The World According To Getty Images by Richard Misek.
Sources
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