Real public-domain photos, found by what they show.
Describe the picture you need. Find Any Photo searches Library of Congress collections, US government photographers and NASA at once, and tells you why each photo is free to use. Nothing is AI-generated.
42,079 public-domain photos indexed, and growing every day.
“Wright brothers first flight at Kitty Hawk 1903”
“astronaut standing on the Moon next to the flag”
“men waiting in a breadline during the Depression”
“crowded New York street with pushcarts, 1900s”
“Union soldiers in camp during the Civil War”
“steam locomotive pulling a passenger train”
Archive search matches words. You're looking for a picture.
Archive catalogues were written by cataloguers, decades ago, in their own words: “Unemployed men, soup kitchen, Chicago”. Type “breadline in the Depression” and you may get nothing. Find Any Photo reads the catalogue records of every archive in the index and matches them by meaning, so you can search the way you'd describe the picture. And it leaves out anything whose licence isn't clearly public domain.
How it works
- Step 1
Describe the photo
Write what should be in the picture, the way you'd tell a picture researcher: "a family listening to the radio in the 1920s", "Wright brothers first flight".
- Step 2
Check where it's from
Every result shows its archive, its date and why it is public domain: a US government work, published before 1931, or a collection given without restrictions.
- Step 3
Download and credit
Download the full-size file from the archive and copy a ready-made credit line. Or ask Claude to find photos for a whole script at once.
Browse by topic
All topics- World War 2 photos
D-Day, the Pacific, bombers and the home front, shot by US military photographers.
- Civil War photos
Soldiers, camps, battlefields and generals, 1861–1865.
- World War 1 photos
Trenches, soldiers, early aircraft and the home front, 1914–1918.
- D-Day photos
The Normandy landings of June 6, 1944.
- Vietnam War photos
Patrols, helicopters, river boats and air operations, by US military photographers.
- Korean War photos
Soldiers, Inchon, winter fighting and refugees, 1950–1953.
- Great Depression photos
Breadlines, migrant families and the Dust Bowl, from the FSA photographers.
- Titanic photos
The ship, her crew, the survivors and the news, 1911–1912.
- Abraham Lincoln photos
Portraits, Antietam, the inaugurations and the funeral.
- Earth from space photos
The whole Earth, cities at night, hurricanes and coastlines, by NASA.
- Hubble photos
Galaxies, nebulae and planets from the Hubble Space Telescope.
- Moon landing photos
Apollo 11 and the Apollo missions on the lunar surface.
- Astronaut photos
Spacewalks, training and crews in orbit, from Mercury to Artemis.
- NASA photos
Launches, the Shuttle, the Space Station, Mars and research aircraft.
- Dorothea Lange photos
Migrant Mother and her FSA work of the 1930s.
- Lewis Hine photos
Child labor in mills, mines and streets, and the Empire State Building.
- Wright brothers photos
Kitty Hawk, the first flight and the Wright Flyers.
Every photo comes with its paperwork
Each photo says why it is public domain, in plain words, and which record that was read from. Files that carry a Creative Commons licence next to a public-domain tag are left out, so “public domain” here means public domain.
Turn on Safest licences to see only photos published before 1931, US government works and collections given without restrictions. How licences work
Use it inside Claude
Writing a script or an article with Claude? Add Find Any Photo and ask for photos for each part. Every app uses the same address; you sign in once with your email or Google account.
Claude (web, desktop, iPhone, Android)
Use the button, or go to Customize → Connectors → Add custom connector and paste the address. Free plans can add one custom connector; Pro, Max, Team and Enterprise can add more.
https://findanyphoto.com/api/mcpClaude Code
Run this in your terminal, then type /mcp in Claude Code and sign in.
claude mcp add --transport http find-any-photo https://findanyphoto.com/api/mcpCursor and other MCP apps
Add this server to your MCP settings (mcp.json). Your app opens a browser window to sign in.
{"mcpServers":{"find-any-photo":{"url":"https://findanyphoto.com/api/mcp"}}}Free to start
Photo pages, downloads and credit lines are free. 50 searches a month are free with an account; Pro is $8 a month, or $60 a year, for 2,000.
Questions
- Are the photos AI-generated?
- No. Every result is a real photograph from a public archive: Library of Congress collections and US government photographers (through their copies on Wikimedia Commons) and NASA's Image and Video Library. AI is used only to read the archive records so they can be searched by meaning.
- Can I use these photos in my videos, books or ads?
- They are public domain in the United States, so you can use them, including commercially, without asking or paying. Each photo shows why it is public domain (for example, a US government work, or published before 1931) and the record its licence was read from. Laws differ in other countries, and a photo of a person can raise privacy or publicity questions in advertising, so check if you use one that way.
- Do I have to credit the photos?
- Public-domain photos don't legally require a credit, but archives ask for one and it helps anyone checking your work. Every photo comes with a ready-made credit line, and the credits tool in Claude writes them for a whole set.
- How is this different from searching the archives myself?
- Archive search engines match the exact words in their catalogues, so a natural description like "a family listening to the radio in the 1920s" often returns nothing. Find Any Photo searches by meaning across several archives at once and filters out photos whose licence isn't clearly public domain. In our test on 30 real requests from video creators, across 2,000 archive photos, it found a usable photo in the top five for 24 to 28 of them; Wikimedia Commons' own search found one for 18.
- What does it cost?
- Photo pages, downloads and credit lines are free. Searching is free for 50 searches a month with a free account (5 a day without one); Pro is $8 a month or $60 a year for 2,000 searches a month.
- Which apps does it work in?
- The website, and Claude on the web, desktop and phone, Claude Code, Cursor and other apps that support remote MCP connectors with sign-in.