I. Getting Started - Basic Questions to Consider

Unless you have selected a building to research in your immediate vicinity, you will have to rely on reproductions of your building. If you do get the chance to see your building, track down and study as many images as you can beforehand.

Questions to consider:

• What type of image do you need? Ensure that it conveys the information appropriate to your text and arguement.
  



- detailed shot of a painting?

- an interior or exterior view of a building?

- a conceptual sketch, plan, section, or elevation?

• Do you need something artistic / atmospheric? Something technical? Will it help your argument if you included a dramatic black & white photograph with heavy contrasts or a straight-forward reproduction? If you are writing a more interpretive essay, the artistic image may be appropriate, but if analyzing the object reproduced, you may want to avoid artistic renderings.

  *Consider the difference between the way the White House was reproduced here and here. What does each image imply about the building or the photographer's interpetation of the building? Which one is better for detail or context? Which one is more subjective?

• What terms should I use when looking for a specific picture? When searching image databases or print resources, bear in mind that a single image may be described or assigned a variety of terms. Mother, woman, matron, female could all describe the same painting or photograph. Until the 20th century, many art objects had no uniform title. Their names were given to them by art historians, who frequently disputed and changed them. But do not let the terms fool you! You simply have to experiment with synonyms / different terms until you find what you're looking for.

  *You may search for terms related to types of objects and architecture (e.g., amphora, cathedral), materials (bronze, stained glass), styles and periods (e.g., Neolithic, Baroque), types of people (e.g., painters, sculptors), activities (e.g., museology, printmaking), physical attributes (e.g., inlays, crazing), and associated concepts (e.g., verism, sprezzatura). Most online and print resources categorize their images with a specific set of terms; usually, these are terms you want to use for "subject" search. To familiarize yourself with these terms, checked the Getty Research Institute's Art & Architecture Thesaurus.

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Whether freely available on the web or found within a licensed database, Yale students have access to many image resources. The trick is figuring out where to begin and what to select. Depending on how you use the image - be it in a presentation, paper, website - it is important to note the image's digital quality and how that may or may not transfer into another medium. For more information on using the image in a paper, click here.

1) Licensed Databases
Yale subscribes to many image databases and provides several image databases specific to Yale collections. For a quick look at the arts related databases, click here. Familiarize yourself with any copyright restrictions these resources may have on their image data, particularly if you are interested in using a licensed image in a publication, a web site, or for commercial purposes. For more information on using copyrighted images, click here.

2) Free Web Resources
Think critically when using images from the web. There are many excellent and scholarly free resources but the media quality will vary. In addition to those recommended free databases listed here, the following types of sources are also worth reviewing.

• General Image Search Engines

- Google's Image Search: Boasts more than than one billion images indexed but is quick to point out that Google is not responsible for how you use the images. Some images may be copyright protected, others may not. In the advanced search page, you may specify filetype, color, and size.
- AltaVista Image Search: Similar to Google, allows you to limit your search by file size, color.

• Image Databases
  - Corbis: A large, comprehensive commercial image database. A great way to find an image but most are not free and if you choose to download a Corbis image without paying for it, the image will be watermarked. The images fall into seven broad categories: historical, art, sports, commercial, news, entertainment, and portraiture.
  - Getty Images: From news and sports photography to contemporary and archival imagery, Getty Images’ products are found each day in newspapers, magazines, advertising, films, television, books and websites.There are loads of collections and while you can download certain images, the quality is poor. Like Corbis, this is a commercial image database.

 

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Finding Images in Books - Using Orbis
There are a couple of quick ways you can find books about your building or art object and determine if there are published images in the book. If you are studying the Louvre, for example, below are some suggested subject headings that will find books with images of the building.

- Louvre (Paris, France)--Pictorial works.
- Musée du Louvre--Pictorial works.
***Pictorial works is a subject heading that can be applied to any building you are researching.

Other Examples of Advanced Subject Searches:
[Westminster Abbey] AND [Pictorial works]
[Loos, Adolf] AND [Pictorial works]
[Architecture] AND [Vienna] AND [Pictorial works]

Once in an Orbis record, you can immediately determine if the book has pictures by looking at the description field. This field will tell you right away if a book includes illustrations (meaning photographs, drawings, graphs, etc.).

Author: Archimbaud, Nicholas d'
Uniform title: [Louvre. English]
Title: Louvre : portrait of a museum / conceived and photographed by Nicholas d'Archimbaud ; text by Bruno de Cessole ... [et al.].
Published: New York : Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 1998.
Description: 335 p. : col. ill. ; 30 cm. *In this case, there are color illustrations included.

Title: Wien, innere Stadt 1860-1900 : Album / [herausgegeben von Helfried Seemann und Christian Lunzer].
Published: Wien : Album, Verlag für Photographie, c1995.
Description: 1 v. (unpaged) : chiefly ill. ; 25 cm. *In this case, the majority of the book is illustrations.

Finding Images in Magazines or Journals
Most arts-related databases at Yale, e.g., Avery Index, Art Abstracts, Bibliography of the History of Art, etc., like Orbis, will tell you if an article features images.

When searching Art Full Text or Art Index Retrospective, you can limit your searches to types of illustrations found in a pull-down menu. In both of these resources, any illustration information is found in the physical despcription field.

In the cases of art objects, in Art Full Text and Art Index Retrospective, you can specify "Reproduction" as a keyword in one of the search fields. This will retrieve citations of reproductions of your work in magazine / journal articles. Examples:

If you want a magazine or journal reproduction of Mark Rothko works, phrase your search as follows:

(ARTIST = Rothko, Mark) AND (KEYWORD = reproduction)

If you want reproductions of Starry Night, phrase your search as follows:
(TITLE = Starry Night) AND (KEYWORD = reproduction)

With the Avery Index, you can specify architectural drawings, renderings, plans, elevations, etc., in the physical description field.

(PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION = plan* or elev* or photo*) AND (SUBJECT = Uffizi)
*asterisk truncates your search term yielding variants of the term, e.g., plans, elevations, elevated, photos, photographs, etc.)

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V. Using Images: Employing Images in Your Essay

Now that you have found your images, what's next? Ask yourself the following questions:

• How many images do you really need? Be careful about putting too many images into your essay; not only will too many images take away from those which are really adding something to your arguement but it might suggest that you are making up for sparse text.
• What is the best type of image to use?
  • Will a thumbnail-sized digital image do?
  • How about a mounted photograph from the VRC?
  • High quality color illustration published in an art monograph?

Using Digital Images

A common question people have about image databases, particularly those that Yale subscribes to like ARTstor, the Associated Press Photo Archive, and others, is "how can I download those images?" This answer will vary with virtually every online image resource you use.

Generally speaking:

• If a database allows you to download one of their images, the downloaded image will be at a lower resolution - for example.
• The image may be watermarked or branded. Here's a "wild" example.

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VI. Citing Your Image Resources

Bibliographic Styles for Images: Just as you give credit to an author when referencing his/her written work, you must cite your image sources. (Crediting a photographic reproduction of a Hogarth engraving is markedly different from crediting Hogarth for the original object.) There are a variety of different styles and formats to follow for artwork, illustrations, figures, charts, text figures, plates, etc.

• If you plan to use images directly in your paper, check with your instructor to see if he/she prefers them in the body of the text or at the end of the paper, and how they should be cited.

Style Guides

- The Chicago Manual of Style. (2003) 15th ed. A&A Reference - Z253 .U69 2003 (LC). Below are some Chicago formats for the various types of image citations. **For a thorough explanation, refer to Chapter 12 in the manual.

• Figure - When indicating the image, "figure" is abbreviated and followed by a number, Fig. 12. When referred to in the text, "figure" is lowercased and spelled out except in paranthethical references: as figure 1 shows... vs. (fig. 10).
• Captions - For incomplete sentences, closing punctuation is not needed; for sentences, use closing punctuation. Number your images (each image should be referred to as a figure), and provide captions. Art and architecture caption examples:
• "Carvings on the south entrance of Hoysalesvara Temple"
• "Wells Cathedral - west front"
• "The head of Venus - a detail from Botticelli's Birth of Venus."
• Leonardo da Vinci, Madonna of the Rocks. Oil on canvas (original panel), 78 x 48 1/2 in. Louvre, Paris.
• Figure 3. Renzo Piano, J.M. Cultural Centre, model prototype of main structural system.

- MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. (2003) 6th ed. CCL - LB2369 .G53X 2003 (LC)

- A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations. (1996) 6th ed. A&A Reference - LB2369 T865 1996 (LC). Chapter 7 covers illustrations quite thoroughly including where to place images in the text and how to identify them.

• Credit Lines - Whether you have permission to reproduce an image or are using an image in the Public Domain, you must credit the copyright holder or originator of the image. While there are now fixed styles for such credit lines, but make sure they are consistent. Examples:
• Portrait engraving with permission: From a drawing by J. Webber for Cook's Voyage to the Pacific Ocean, 1776-1780, reprinted, by permission of the writer, from Edwin H. Bryan Jr., Ancient Hawaiin Life (Honolulu, 1938), 10.
• Photograph: Reprinted, by permission, from Alison Jolly, Lemur Behavior, pl. 6. Photograph by C.H. Fraser Rowell. Copyright 1996 by the University of Chicago.
• Illustration in the Public Domain: Illustration by Joseph Pennell for Henry James, English Hours (Boston, 1905), facing p. 82.

- The Dissertation: An Architecture Student's Handbook. (2000). A&A Reference - NA2108 B67X 2000 (LC): This text explains has useful recommendations for formating an image in a paper, consistency in referring to your image / subject, and addressing copyright issues.

- A Short Guide to Writing about Art. (2003) 7th ed. A&A Reference - N7476 .B37 2002 (LC) Refer to Chapter 10 for specific tips on using illustrated works in your paper.

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Spring 2005