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FORGOTTEN FRAME

Image & copyright policy

Photographs are the whole point of this site, so how we obtain and credit them is not an afterthought. This is the standard we hold ourselves to.

Sourcing

  • Original photography and illustration commissioned or produced by us.
  • Public domain material from national libraries, museums and archives.
  • Openly licensed material, used within the terms of its licence.
  • Agency or rights-holder licensed material, used under a written agreement.

We do not scrape social media, aggregator sites or news wires. If we cannot establish a right to publish an image, we do not publish it — we describe it and link to a legitimate place to view it instead.

Credit and captions

Every published photograph carries a caption describing what it shows, a credit line naming the creator or holding institution, and a licence note. Where the source is online and stable, we link to it. Credit lines are carried across intact from the supplying archive.

The image record we keep

Before a photograph is published we record its source URL, the creator where known, the holding collection, the exact licence stated by that collection, the attribution line, and the date we checked the file’s own licence page. That record is printed at the foot of every article. If any part of it cannot be established, the image is not published.

Every file is reviewed individually — a permissive licence on one photograph in a collection is never treated as permission for another. Approved files are copied to our own servers and served from this domain; we do not hotlink to archives, agencies or third-party sites.

Accuracy of image claims

  • We publish dates and locations only when they can be verified.
  • Uncertainty is stated in the caption rather than smoothed over.
  • We do not alter photographs beyond standard tonal correction, and we say when a scan has been restored.

Rights holders: corrections and removal

If you own rights in an image on this site and believe it is used without permission or credited incorrectly, email rights@forgottenframe.com with the page URL, a description of the work and evidence of ownership. We review promptly and will correct, credit or remove as appropriate. See also our terms of use.