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How to Cite an Image, Photograph, or Artwork in APA 7

APA 7 cites an image or artwork as a visual work: the artist or photographer is the author, the title is italic sentence case, a bracketed medium follows the title, and the museum or website is the source. This page follows the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 7th edition (2020), §10.14 (examples 97–101, pp. 346–347), the current APA Style artwork and clip art or stock image pages, and the Common Reference Examples Guide last updated 3 March 2026. It is the long APA image guide. The shorter source-by-source walkthrough is image in APA; moving images belong on YouTube or film; social posts belong on social media in APA.

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Photo: Kari Shea, Wikimedia Commons (CC0)
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How to Cite an Image in APA: Quick Answer

Credit the artist, photographer, or account that created the work. Put the year the work was made (or uploaded) in parentheses. Italicize the title in sentence case. Immediately after the title, name the medium in square brackets — [Painting], [Photograph], [Clip art], [Infographic], or [Map]. End with the museum and city for an object you saw in a gallery, or the site name and URL for a file you opened online. Pair the reference-list entry with an in-text citation that uses those same names and the year. If you reproduce the image as a figure, add a copyright attribution in the figure note instead of a parenthetical citation under the picture. Start from the APA generator or the image citation generator when you want the same pattern filled in.

APA 7 §10.14 templates (slots only; not real sources)

Reference, museum work viewed in person:

Surname, I. I. (1930). Title of work [Painting]. Museum Name, City, ST, Country.

Reference, museum work viewed online:

Surname, I. I. (1930). Title of work [Painting]. Museum Name, City, ST, Country. https://www.example.com/artwork

Reference, photograph or stock image on a website:

Surname, I. I. (1985). Title of photograph [Photograph]. Site Name. https://www.example.com/photo

Parenthetical citation:

(Wood, 1930)

Narrative citation:

Wood (1930)

Do not list Google Images, Pinterest, or a course LMS as the source. Do not skip the bracketed medium. Do not treat a stock-photo license as optional reading: some files need no citation at all, and some need both a figure note and a reference. A punctuation reminder lives on the APA cheat sheet.

What This Guide Covers (and What It Does Not)

This is an APA 7 source-type guide for still visual works: museum paintings and prints, photographs, clip art, stock images, infographics, and maps. It is not an MLA tutorial — that short walkthrough is image in MLA — and it is not a caption-only cheat. The image-in-APA examples page is the short APA walkthrough; this URL is the one that keeps the official strings, the license fork, and the figure-note order. An earlier draft of this page invented a 2024 climate-change infographic, a fake Unsplash team photo, a National Geographic Instagram post with a dummy URL, and treated Hokusai's The Great Wave off Kanagawa as an anonymous work. Those fabricated or wrong strings stay gone.

Cite the Image, or Reproduce It as a Figure?

Students mix up two jobs. Mentioning van Gogh in a sentence needs a reference-list entry and an in-text citation. Pasting the painting into the paper makes it a figure under Chapter 7: numbered, titled, and — unless the license says otherwise — followed by a copyright attribution in the general note. Citation and permission are not the same act. Sections 12.14–12.18 cover copyright and permissions; §7.22–7.28 cover figure parts. The Alamo Colleges reprint of the APA Style clip-art page is also explicit that the same license rules apply to student papers, professional manuscripts, and slide decks.

Cite the image in the text when you…

  • Discuss, describe, or analyze a work the reader will not see on the page
  • Point at a museum object, photograph, or infographic as evidence
  • Need a parenthetical or narrative citation next to the sentence

Reproduce it as a figure when you…

  • Insert the image, chart, or map into the paper or slide deck
  • Must add a figure number, italic title, and (usually) a Note.
  • Need a copyright line in the note instead of (Wood, 1930) under the picture
APA 7 visual works at a glance (§10.14)
What you usedAuthor elementBracket after the titleSource element
Painting, print, sculpture, or museum photograph, seen in the galleryArtist[Painting], [Lithograph], [Photograph], or a finer mediumMuseum name and city; no URL
The same object on the museum's websiteArtistSame bracketMuseum name, city, and the artwork URL
Photograph posted on a magazine or prize sitePhotographer[Photograph] or a bracketed description if untitledSite name and URL
Infographic or mapCreator or organization[Infographic] or [Map]Site name and URL
Clip art or stock image whose license requires creditUsername or photographer[Clip art] or [Photograph]Site name, URL, plus a figure note if you reprint it
Clip art whose license says no attribution requiredNone — no referenceNoneFigure number and title only if you insert it in a paper

The Official APA 7 Rule, from §10.14

Classroom APA in 2026 still means the seventh edition of the Publication Manual, published in 2020. There is no eighth edition to switch to. Visual works sit in §10.14. The free worked examples live on APA Style's artwork references and clip art or stock images pages. The Common Reference Examples Guide (last updated 3 March 2026) adds a current §10.14 infographic. University libraries reprint the same notes. The wording this page locks is the official APA Style artwork guidance as restated by the Alamo Colleges APA Style guide:

APA Style artwork notes (Publication Manual §10.14, as restated by Alamo Colleges)

Use this format to cite all types of museum artwork, including paintings, sculptures, photographs, prints, drawings, digital art, crafts, and installations.
Always include a description of the medium or format in square brackets after the title. The description is flexible (e.g., a general description such as “[Painting]” or a more specific description such as “[Oil painting]” or “[Oil on canvas]”).
For untitled artwork, include a description in square brackets in place of a title.
Provide a link to the artwork on the museum website if available.

Cite the handbook itself only when you quote the rules. The official artwork strings below are the Publication Manual / APA Style set: Grant Wood's American Gothic on the Art Institute site, Eugène Delacroix's Louvre lithograph (no URL, because the example is the object in the room), and Vincent van Gogh's The Starry Night as both the in-person museum line and the official online line with the MoMA Learning URL.

Museum Artwork Viewed in Person or Online

APA does not write a separate "reproduction of" line for a file on the museum's own site. The artist and year stay those of the original work. What changes is the source: add the artwork URL when you consulted the collection page, and omit the URL when you stood in front of the object. Do not paste an Artstor, JSTOR, or Google Images address in place of the museum page. The official Wood URL in the Publication Manual still resolves; the Art Institute's current permalink is artic.edu/artworks/6565/american-gothic. Either URL identifies the same object (reference number 1930.934, oil on beaver board, Gallery 263).

Official APA 7 museum artwork examples (Publication Manual §10.14 / APA Style)

Reference list, viewed in person (Wood, 1930):

Wood, G. (1930). American gothic [Painting]. Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL, United States.

In-text:

(Wood, 1930)

Reference list, same work viewed on the museum site:

Wood, G. (1930). American gothic [Painting]. Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL, United States. https://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/6565

Reference list, viewed in person (Delacroix, 1826–1827):

Delacroix, E. (1826–1827). Faust attempts to seduce Marguerite [Lithograph]. The Louvre, Paris, France.

In-text:

(Delacroix, 1826–1827)

Reference list, viewed in person (van Gogh, 1889):

van Gogh, V. (1889). The starry night [Painting]. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, United States.

In-text:

(van Gogh, 1889)

Reference list, same work on the museum site (APA Style / Alamo):

van Gogh, V. (1889). The starry night [Painting]. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, United States. https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/vincent-van-gogh-the-starry-night-1889/

Keep the artist's own capitalization: APA cites Vincent van Gogh as van Gogh, V., not Van Gogh, V. Year ranges use an en dash. City, state abbreviation, and country appear for U.S. museums; city and country are enough for Paris. If a museum later changes its permalink, keep the URL you actually opened — do not invent a DOI for a painting that does not have one.

Photographs That Are Not Museum Objects

Section 10.14, example 101, is the pattern for a photograph you cite but do not reprint, when the file lives on a magazine, prize, or archive site rather than a museum object record. The site name is the publisher. If the photograph has no title, replace the italic title with a bracketed description. To reprint the file, you still need the reference and a copyright check (Publication Manual §12.15).

Official APA 7 photograph examples, plus one real Library of Congress file

Reference list (McCurry, 1985; Publication Manual §10.14 #101):

McCurry, S. (1985). Afghan girl [Photograph]. National Geographic. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/national-geographic-magazine-50-years-of-covers/#/ngm-1985-jun-714.jpg

In-text:

(McCurry, 1985)

Reference list, untitled series (Rinaldi, 2016):

Rinaldi, J. (2016). [Photograph series of a boy who finds his footing after abuse by those he trusted]. The Pulitzer Prizes. https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/jessica-rinaldi

In-text:

(Rinaldi, 2016)

Reference list, Library of Congress (Lange, 1936):

Lange, D. (1936). Destitute pea pickers in California. Mother of seven children. Age thirty-two. Nipomo, California [Photograph]. Library of Congress, Washington, DC, United States. https://www.loc.gov/item/2017762891/

In-text:

(Lange, 1936)

Keep the official McCurry string as APA printed it. The hash URL now 301s to National Geographic's 50-years-of-covers article, not a standalone JPEG. If you opened a later story instead — for example The Afghan Girl: A Life Revealed — cite that page as a magazine article, not example 101. Lange's file is the March 1936 Farm Security Administration exposure commonly called Migrant Mother. The Library of Congress catalog title is the longer caption above; item 2017762891 is the record. Either form is identifiable; the catalog title is the one readers can search.

Infographics and Maps

An infographic is its own visual work (example 99), not a website with a picture attached. A named map uses [Map]. If the map has no title, describe it in square brackets and add a retrieval date only when the content is designed to change, such as live directions. The 3 March 2026 Common Reference Examples Guide reprints a current APA Publishing infographic you can still open. The Publication Manual's Racial Dot Map URL no longer serves the map.

Official APA 7 infographic and map examples

Reference list (Rossman & Palmer, 2015; §10.14 #99):

Rossman, J., & Palmer, R. (2015). Sorting through our space junk [Infographic]. World Science Festival. https://www.worldsciencefestival.com/2015/11/space-junk-infographic/

In-text:

(Rossman & Palmer, 2015)

Reference list (APA Publishing; Common Reference Examples, 3 March 2026):

American Psychological Association. (n.d.). Data sharing [Infographic]. https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/data-sharing-infographic.pdf

In-text:

(American Psychological Association, n.d.)

Reference list (Cable, 2013; official Publication Manual string):

Cable, D. (2013). The racial dot map [Map]. University of Virginia, Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service. https://demographics.coopercenter.org/Racial-Dot-Map

In-text:

(Cable, 2013)

Keep the official Rossman and Cable strings as APA printed them. The live World Science Festival page for that URL now bylines Roxanne Palmer and Ryan McCarthy, not "J. Rossman." If you retrieved the page today, use the names on the page you opened. Cooper Center took the 2010 Racial Dot Map offline in January 2022; the official APA URL now lands on the Center's homepage. Cite Cable (2013) only if you actually used an archived copy. Do not silently substitute Census Dots (Luke Loreti, 2020 Census) and keep Cable's name.

Clip Art and Stock Images: Read the License First

This is the failure mode that makes a tidy image citation wrong. APA 7 does not treat every Unsplash, Pixabay, iStock, Getty, Adobe Stock, Shutterstock, or Flickr file the same way. The clip art or stock images page, reprinted by the Alamo Colleges guide, splits the job by license:

APA Style clip-art license rules

If the license associated with clip art or a stock image states “no attribution required,” then do not provide an APA Style reference, in-text citation, or copyright attribution.
If the license associated with clip art or a stock image says that attribution is required, then provide a copyright attribution in the figure note and a reference list entry for the image in the reference list.
Although for most images you must look at the license on a case-by-case basis, images and clip art from programs such as Microsoft Word and Microsoft PowerPoint can be used without attribution.
The guidelines apply regardless of whether the image costs money to purchase or is available for free. The guidelines also apply to both students and professionals and to both papers and PowerPoint presentations.

When the license requires credit, the official Openclipart and Flickr lines are:

Official APA 7 clip-art and stock-image examples

Reference list (gdj, 2018; Openclipart):

gdj. (2018). Neural network deep learning prismatic [Clip art]. Openclipart. https://openclipart.org/detail/309343/neural-network-deep-learning-prismatic

In-text (when you discuss the file, not reprint it):

(gdj, 2018)

Reference list (Denali National Park and Preserve, 2013):

Denali National Park and Preserve. (2013). Lava [Photograph]. Flickr. https://www.flickr.com/photos/denalinps/8639280606/

In-text:

(Denali National Park and Preserve, 2013)

A username is a legal author element. Do not expand gdj into a guessed legal name. Unsplash, Pexels, and Pixabay licenses often say attribution is optional, not forbidden — optional is not the same as "no attribution required." If the deed is silent, cite the file. Canva and Adobe Express templates follow the license on that asset, not the marketing page for the app.

Reproducing an Image as a Figure

A reprinted image is a figure: Figure 1, an italic title in title case, the image, then a general note. The note begins with Note. APA Style is explicit that the copyright line replaces the in-text citation under the picture, and that the elements appear in a different order from the reference. In a slide deck, Alamo's reprint of the same page adds one extra sentence students miss:

APA Style figure-note rule and official Flickr example

The copyright attribution is used instead of an in-text citation. The copyright attribution consists of the same elements as the reference list entry, but in a different order (title, author, date, site name, URL), followed by the name of the Creative Commons License.
In a presentation, the figure number and title are optional but the note containing the copyright attribution is required.

Official figure note (Lava, CC BY 2.0):

Note. From Lava [Photograph], by Denali National Park and Preserve, 2013, Flickr (https://www.flickr.com/photos/denalinps/8639280606/). CC BY 2.0.

Write From for an unchanged copy and Adapted from if you cropped, recolored, or annotated the file. End with In the public domain., a Creative Commons short name (CC BY 2.0, CC0), or Copyright Year by Copyright Holder. Reprinted with permission. Add the permission sentence only when you actually obtained permission. Student papers often skip the permission line; they do not skip the attribution when the license requires one. The artwork citation generator helps when the object has an artist, title, year, and museum; keep the figure note in your own words from the license in front of you.

Figure-note template (translate the slots; keep the order)

From a webpage or stock site:

Note. From Title of work [Photograph], by I. I. Surname, 2013, Site Name (https://www.example.com/image). CC BY 4.0.

From a book you have permission to reprint:

Note. From Title of Book (p. 12), by I. I. Surname, 2020, Publisher Name (https://doi.org/10.xxxx/xxxxx). Copyright 2020 by Copyright Holder. Reprinted with permission.

Exhibitions and Museum Plaques

An exhibition is not the same reference as one object in it. APA Style lists the curator as author when named, or moves the exhibition title to the author position when the curator is unknown. A wall plaque is a separate, usually unrecoverable source. The Alamo reprint of the artwork page states the plaque-date rule that students get backwards:

Official APA Style exhibition and plaque examples

When the curator is unknown, move the title of the exhibition to the author position of the reference.
If the plaque itself is dated, use that date. If the plaque is not dated, use “n.d.” Do not use the date of the artwork or item being described.

Exhibition, curator unknown:

Design for eternity: Architectural models from the ancient Americas [Exhibition]. (2015–2016). The Met Fifth Avenue, New York, NY, United States.

In-text:

(Design for Eternity, 2015–2016)

Exhibition, named curators (Martinez & Douar, 2018–2019):

Martinez, J.-L., & Douar, F. (2018–2019). Archaeology goes graphic [Exhibition]. The Louvre, Paris, France. https://www.louvre.fr/en/expositions/archaeology-goes-graphic

In-text:

(Martinez & Douar, 2018–2019)

Informational plaque:

[Plaque with background information about American Gothic]. (n.d.). Art Institute Chicago, Chicago, IL, United States.

In-text:

([Plaque with background information about American Gothic], n.d.)

Prefer a published catalog or handbook when you can retrieve the same fact from a recoverable source. The Met's 2015–2016 Design for Eternity page has moved more than once; if the listing URL 404s, cite the exhibition as you saw it and skip a dead link rather than inventing a new one.

AI-Generated Images (No Official APA Image Example Yet)

APA Style's 9 September 2025 update tells you how to credit a chat tool for text. It does not ship a worked DALL-E, Midjourney, or Firefly reference. Until it does, do not invent an official string. If you generated the picture yourself, treat it like your own photograph: number and title the figure, then say so in the note. If you reprinted an AI image from a published article, cite that article. The slots below are a labelled template, not Publication Manual wording. For the chat itself, use How to Cite AI.

Labelled template only — not an official APA example

Figure note for an image you generated:

Note. Image generated by the author using Tool Name (Developer, 2026), from the prompt "short prompt text".

Do not invent:

A fake Midjourney URL, a fabricated prompt log, or a DOI for a file that never left your laptop.

Failure Modes Students Actually Hit

Citing Google Images as the source

Google Images is a search index, not a publisher. Open the picture, click through to the host page, and cite that museum, archive, magazine, or stock site. If you cannot leave the thumbnail grid, do not use the image. Reverse-image search helps only when it lands on a stable record you can name.

No artist, or a username instead of a name

Move the italic title (or the bracketed description) to the author position when no creator can be named. Stock sites and Openclipart often give only a handle — gdj is a legal author element. Do not invent a legal name from a display name unless the site states it. See How to Cite a Source With No Author.

No date

Use (n.d.) when the creation or upload year is truly absent. Approximate dates that a catalog prints as ca. 1830 stay in that form. Do not use today's date, the date you downloaded the file, or the date a blog republished it. See How to Cite a Source With No Date.

An Instagram, X, or TikTok image

That is a social-media reference, not a museum or stock-image reference: the author is the account, the date is the post date, and the first twenty words of the caption sit in the title slot. Use How to Cite Social Media in APA. Do not invent a [Photograph] line that pretends the post is a standalone artwork.

An image you made yourself

Do not put yourself in the reference list. Give the figure a number and a title, then write a note such as Note. Photograph taken by the author. or Note. Figure created by the author. If the figure adapts someone else's data or image, that other work still needs a reference and a copyright line. The longer version is How to Cite Your Own Photograph.

A plate or figure inside a book or article

If you used the reproduction in a monograph or journal, cite that book or article. Put the page, figure, or plate number in the in-text citation. Do not build a fake standalone museum entry for a work you never saw except as a printed plate, unless your instructor asked you to cite the original object.

Thinking a citation is a license

A perfect reference does not grant reprint rights. Public-domain status depends on the country and the year the work was published — do not assume a museum JPEG is free because the painting is old. Creative Commons licenses still require the attribution the license names. For a thesis or journal submission, ask the copyright holder when the license is silent.

Format the APA image reference

Once you know whether you consulted a museum object, a collection URL, a stock license, or a social post, the APA citation generator and the image citation generator can fill the author, date, italic title, bracket, and source slots. Keep the figure note and the license language in your own manuscript — the generator does not read a Creative Commons deed for you.

Open the APA citation generatorOpen the image citation generator

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I italicize the title of a painting in APA 7?
Yes. Artwork, photograph, infographic, and map titles are italic sentence case, the same way book titles are. The medium that follows is roman text in square brackets, not italics: American gothic [Painting].
What is the difference between citing a museum painting in person and citing it from the museum website?
The artist, year, italic title, bracketed medium, museum, and city stay the same. Add the collection URL only when you consulted the museum page. Wood (1930) is the official pair: no URL in the gallery, the Art Institute URL on the site. van Gogh (1889) has the same split, with the MoMA Learning URL on the online line.
Do I need a reference for clip art from Microsoft Word or PowerPoint?
No. APA Style says images that ship with those programs may be used without a reference, in-text citation, or copyright attribution, because the software license already covers them. A Pixabay or Flickr file is a different license — read that deed before you skip the citation.
How do I write an APA figure caption for a copyrighted image?
APA 7 does not use a caption under the image in the informal sense. It uses a figure number, an italic title above the image, and a Note. below. For a reprint, the note holds the copyright attribution (From or Adapted from, then title, author, year, site, URL, and license or copyright line). That note replaces the in-text citation. The work still appears in the reference list unless the license said no attribution is required. In a slide deck, the figure number and title are optional, but the copyright note is still required.
How do I cite an untitled photograph in APA?
Drop the italic title and put a description in square brackets in that slot, as in the official Rinaldi (2016) Pulitzer example. Keep the brackets in the in-text citation too.
Should I cite National Geographic or Steve McCurry for Afghan Girl?
Cite McCurry as the author and National Geographic as the source, which is the Publication Manual §10.14 #101 line. The magazine is the publisher of that file, not the photographer's name in both slots. If you read a later article about the photograph, cite the article you opened.
Can I still cite Cable's Racial Dot Map in APA?
Only if you actually used an archived copy. Cooper Center removed the 2010 map in January 2022. The official Publication Manual URL now lands on the Center homepage. A 2020-Census remake such as Census Dots is a different work with a different author.
Can I cite an image I found only on Instagram?
Cite the Instagram post with the social-media template, not the artwork template. If the same photograph also has a museum or magazine record, prefer that stable record and use this page.
How do I cite an image I generated with ChatGPT or Midjourney?
APA has not published a dedicated AI-image example. Number and title the figure, name the tool and the prompt in the Note., and do not invent a DOI. Cite a published article if that is where you found the image. Credit the chat itself with How to Cite AI.
Do I need permission to include an image in a student paper?
Citation is always required when the license asks for credit. Permission is a separate question. Many instructors accept a copyright attribution without a formal permissions letter for coursework. Journals, books, and some theses will not. Public-domain and CC0 files still need an honest license check, not a guess from the file name.