Inclusive Openly Licensed Image Repositories
The following repositories contain openly licensed images that promote diversity and inclusion. We encourage you to use these databases to find images for your courses and projects. Looking for images of objects or general stock photography? Please see our Open and Freely Available Images list.
Image Collections
We’ve broken these repositories down by their overarching mission, but many depict people of multiple identities. You are encouraged to visit each repository to search for images representing our community.
Age-Positive
Age-Positive Image Library: Positive and realistic images of people over 50.
Black and Brown People
Nappy: The mission of Nappy is to “provide beautiful, high-res photos of black and brown people to startups, brands, agencies, and everyone else.”
Picnoi: The mission of this collection is to create a space where creators can find diverse, multi-racial stock imagery.
Most illustration packs have a low-cost fee to support the business model.
Disabled People and Body Positivity
Disabled and Here Collection: From this website, “This is a disability-led effort to provide free & inclusive stock images from our own perspective, with photos and illustrations celebrating disabled Black, Indigenous, people of color (BIPOC).”
Disability: IN: With a mission of disability inclusion, this collection provides stock photography of an office-style workplace.
Free Plus-Size Stock Photos: The goal of AllGo, the company that hosts these photos, is to increase representation of plus-size women doing every-day activities. From their website, “Despite the fact that two-thirds of women in the U.S. are plus-size, just two percent of women shown in media are plus-size.”
Indigenous People
Indigenous People in Education: A collection by Thompson Rivers University meant to help OER creators depict indigenous students. All images in this repository are licensed CC-BY-NC-SA.
LGBTQIA2S+ People
The Gender Spectrum Collection: Please read this site’s guidelines before using their images. The goal of the collection is to represent trans and non-binary individuals. In keeping with the values of the community that these models are sharing, respect and accurate representation are part of the requirement to use these images.
Queer in Tech: Free stock photos (CC-BY 3.0) of queer people working in the tech industry.
Wikimedia Commons LGBT Category: Collection of open images organized under various LGBT categories; Images available under different CC licenses
Multi-Cultural
Iwaria: stock photos from Africa, images are licensed CC0 1.0.
Images of Empowerment: A collection of images of women in 11 different countries leading the way to improving outcomes for their communities. From the website, “Too often, images from low- and middle-income countries focus on poverty and tremendous need rather than what we see everywhere we go: women in decision-making roles, working to earn income, and accessing and providing reproductiv