Buying a photograph from the archive: what the licence allows, and what it does not

When you buy a high-resolution file here, you are buying two things: the supply of a master file that we and our contributors have digitised and kept, and a licence to use it. You are not buying the copyright of the work, and the difference matters.

1. What you receive

The file as it is held in the archive: the photographer’s original, without the Cultural Heritage Online watermark, unretouched, and never enlarged to reach a bigger number.

The specification is written next to the image on the page where you buy it: the size in pixels, the format, the weight, the year the photograph was taken, and the print size at 300 dpi. Read those figures before you buy: they are the description of what will arrive.

Where the picture shown on a page has been cropped for the layout, the file delivered is the full frame, which may be wider or taller than the version on screen.

2. Public domain is not "no conditions"

Many of the works in the archive are in the public domain: the building, the painting, the sculpture. The photograph of the building is another matter: it was taken by someone, and the file was made and kept by someone.

For a public-domain work, you are not paying a royalty to the author of the work; you are paying for the technical supply of the master file and for the licence that comes with it. The two things are separate, and the page says so.

3. The credit

Every use carries the credit as it appears on the page: the photographer, and the archive. We ask for it wherever it can reasonably be shown, and that is almost everywhere: the caption on a page, the colophon in a print, the end title in a video. A credit a reader cannot find is not a credit.

One part of it is not a request. The credits and the metadata written inside the file have to stay there: stripping them is a breach of the licence, and a breach ends it. Where a credit is simply missing from a published use, we ask for the correction first, and that is usually the end of it.

If the credit cannot be displayed at all — a small print, a broadcast where no caption is possible — write to us before the use, not after.

4. What the licence allows

The licence is non-exclusive and non-transferable, and it covers the use you declare at checkout: one publication, one exhibition, one production.

That means:

• you can use the file for that project, in the formats the project requires;
• you cannot resell the file, sublicense it, or use it for a different project without a new licence;
• you cannot claim the photograph as your own;
• you cannot remove the credit where the format allows it.

If a use appears without the credit, we ask for the correction first; if it is not corrected, the licence for that use ends. It is the only sanction we have, and it is enough because the credit is also in the interest of the person who publishes: an image without a source is an image a reader cannot trust.

5. How to propose your photographs

Photographers who want their work in the archive can propose it through the collaboration page. What we look for is not only the image: it is the documentation around it — where it was taken, when, what it shows, and the rights to publish it.

A photograph with a date, a place and a clear rights statement enters the archive; a beautiful photograph without them cannot.

6. Why the archive sells files at all

Digitising, keeping and describing a photograph has a cost, and a licence is how that cost is shared with the people who use the image. It is also what makes the difference between an archive that lasts and a folder that disappears.

7. A scan is not a photograph

A scan reproduces a document; a photograph interprets a place. The archive uses both, but it sells the second: an image taken at a certain hour, from a certain point, with a reason.

That is why the description next to the file matters as much as the file: the year, the place, the photographer. A high-resolution scan without those is a document; a photograph with them is an asset someone can license, credit and cite.

Read the terms and buy the file with its licence: /image-license/

Spotted an error? Write to [email protected] and we correct it the same day.

Read more from the magazine

Editorial pieces from the CHO archive on the same topic.

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