How to Cite an Image or Photograph

There are two different jobs here and they have different rules. Citing an image means referring to it in your text, as you would a book. Reproducing an image means placing a copy of it in your paper or slides. Reproduction needs a caption with source details beneath the image, and outside coursework it usually needs permission or a licence.

This guide covers photographs and images found online. For paintings and museum objects see how to cite art, and for charts, tables and graphs see how to cite a graph.

What to Collect

• Creator (photographer, illustrator or organization)
• Year or full date
• Title, or your own short description if there is none
• Type of image (photograph, infographic, map, clip art)
• Site, collection or museum that holds it
• URL
• Licence or copyright statement, if you plan to reproduce it

The worked example is Dorothea Lange's 1936 photograph known as Migrant Mother, held by the Library of Congress. Lange took it while working for a U.S. government agency, and the Library's rights advisory for it reads "No known restrictions on publication." The Library's catalogue title is the original caption, "Destitute pea pickers in California. Mother of seven children. Age thirty-two. Nipomo, California". The examples use the title by which the photograph is generally known; either is acceptable if you use it consistently.

Quick Reference by Major Style

APA (7th Edition)

In-text: (Lange, 1936)

Replace "[Photograph]" with the right description: [Infographic], [Map], [Clip art], [Painting].

MLA (9th Edition)

In-text: (Lange)

If you saw the original in a gallery, replace the website and URL with the institution and city: Museum of Modern Art, New York. For an untitled image, write a description in plain text with no italics.

Chicago (18th Edition)

Chicago usually cites images in notes or in a caption and leaves them out of the bibliography.

Footnote:

Bibliography, if required:

Harvard (Cite Them Right)

In-text: (Lange, 1936)

Some Harvard guides add a medium label such as [Photograph] after the title. Follow your institution's version.

IEEE

The IEEE Reference Guide has no format for standalone images. Engineering papers normally reuse figures from published papers, and these are cited by the paper's reference number, with a credit line in the caption when the figure is reproduced. For a standalone online image, adapt the website format:

In-text: [1], or for a figure inside a cited paper, [2, Fig. 3]

Reproducing an Image in Your Paper

When the image itself appears in your work, each style wants source information directly under it.

APA. Number and title the figure above the image, then add a note below:

End the note with the copyright status: "In the public domain", "CC BY 4.0", or "Copyright 2020 by Name. Reprinted with permission." The image also gets a reference-list entry.

MLA. Label it "Fig. 1." below the image, followed by a caption. If the caption gives full source details and you don't cite the image elsewhere, no works-cited entry is needed.

Chicago. Put a caption below the figure with a credit line: "Figure 1. Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother, 1936. Library of Congress."

Harvard. Caption the figure and add the in-text citation: "Figure 1: Migrant mother (Lange, 1936)". The full reference goes in the reference list.

IEEE. Caption as "Fig. 1." and add "Reproduced from [1]" or "Adapted from [1]". To reuse a figure from a published paper you normally need the copyright holder's permission, unless the paper's licence already allows reuse; check the publisher's reuse policy.

Permission. Coursework that is only seen by your instructor is generally covered by educational exceptions such as fair use or fair dealing. A thesis deposited in a repository, a journal article or a public website is publication. For those you need an image that is in the public domain or openly licensed, or written permission.

Images on Social Media and Image Sites

Instagram, X and similar. Cite the post, not just the image. See how to cite social media.

Flickr, Unsplash, Wikimedia Commons. The uploader's username can stand in for a real name. APA writes it as shown; give the real name first with the username in square brackets if both are known.

Getty Images and other agencies. The photographer is the creator, and the agency is the site or publisher.

AI-generated images. Cite the tool that produced the image, and include your prompt in the text or an appendix. See how to cite AI tools.

Images Inside Books and Articles

If you are referring to a photograph or figure printed in a book or article, cite the book or article and point to the figure: (Author, 2011, p. 27, Figure 3) in APA, or "fig. 3" in a Chicago note. You do not create a separate reference for the image unless it is a credited work by someone else reproduced in that book. In that case, credit the artist in your sentence and cite the book you found it in.

Common Mistakes

• Citing Google Images, Pinterest or a search results URL as the source
• Citing the image file's direct address (ending in .jpg) instead of the page that describes it, unless that is all there is
• Assuming that a citation gives you the right to reproduce an image
• Omitting the bracketed description in APA
• Leaving out the copyright or licence statement under a reproduced image in APA
• Using an image with no traceable origin when a documented alternative exists

Sources for These Formats

• APA Style, "Clip Art or Stock Image References" and "Artwork References" (apastyle.apa.org), and Publication Manual, 7th ed., sections 7.22 to 7.36 and 12.14 to 12.18
• MLA Handbook, 9th ed., on images and on figure captions, and the MLA Style Center (style.mla.org)
• The Chicago Manual of Style, 18th ed., on captions, credit lines and citing artwork (chicagomanualofstyle.org)
• Pears and Shields, Cite Them Right; University College Dublin Library, Harvard style guide, "Images/photographs"
• IEEE Reference Guide, version 3.28.2025 (no image format)
• Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, record for digital ID fsa 8b29516 (hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/fsa.8b29516)

Full style rules: APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, IEEE.