Usage of Titanic Photographs

[Jon-Paul Cunningham]

Hi everyone, I'm just wondering if anyone here can help me out with something...

I'm trying to find out if there are any collections of Titanic photographs out there which I would be able to secure permission to use one in a poster...

I know about corbis and stock photography websites like that but their prices are far too high given the fact that this is a small project and profit is not the aim here...

So I'm just wondering what way does this sort of thing work with Titanic photographs, the photographers wuld be long gone so where would I find permission for use? if say someone has a private collection of original prints?

Thanks
J

 

[Jason Schleisman]

Hey Jon-Paul, check out the Library of Congress image archive website. Many of the pre-1923 photographs are free for anyone to download and use for whatever purpose. Generally speaking, if an image was taken prior to 1923 then it's copyright (in the United States) is no longer valid and is now in the public domain.

There are exceptions if the original images are still held by a private entity and not publicly released. Also if an original pre-1923 image is published in a recent book (after 1923), you can't just photocopy it from the book to use for your own purposes.

However, many pre-1923 images from Library of Congress are perfectly safe to use, just do a little research to make absolutely sure first:

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/pp/pphome.html

 

[Jon-Paul Cunningham]

Thanks Jason

I'll have a look... yeah I do need to make sure but its difficult to do so with old photographs because you don't know who owns what...

I might be in luck though!
Thanks
J

 

[Marlene Dotterer]

Along the same lines of copyright: does anyone know if a picture of Thomas Andrews can be used on a book cover? I'm thinking not, but I don't know how to find out.