Finding, Citing, and Using Images
All images, photos, graphs, etc. in your essays should be directly relevant to your argument. Select images that will:
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Help your readers understand your point.
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Illustrate your ideas.
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Provide examples and evidence of your thesis.
Make direct references to your images in your essay. There are a few ways to do this:
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“An example of this style can be seen in Figure 1.”
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“This style was very ornate. (See example Figure 1)”
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“Many chairs of this era, particularly the chairs at Versailles (Figure 1), were very ornate.”
There are two ways to organize your images: place them in your text next to the paragraph where you discuss them (Figure 1), or put them all together at the end of the essay (Figure 2).
Boston Architectural College, Learning Resource Center. Using and Citing Illustrations in Essays. 2015.
Captions and Citations
Images always need captions. Captions should do two things; label the image and tell us the image’s source. Here's an example of downloading a high-resolution image and citation in a few clicks!
Alongside other street vendors, artist David Hammons sold snowballs outside of Cooper Union in 1983.
David Hammons. Snow Ball Sale. 1983. JSTOR, https://jstor.org/stable/community.14215831. Accessed 17 Jan. 2024.
