To cite an image or photo in Chicago style, you need the creator’s name, image title, date of origin, and the source of the image, in that specific order. These are the necessary parts for how to cite an image in Chicago style, although there are variations depending on what and how you’re citing (explained below).
Most Chicago Manual of Style citations for images use the following formula, according to the most recent 17th edition:
Last name of creator, First name.
The “medium” is simply the type of image, such as “Painting,” “Photograph,” or “Table.” The “source of the image” is wherever you saw the image, such as the name of a museum, website, or social media platform. The formula is a little different if you found the image in print, so below we explain in more detail how to cite images from a book in Chicago style.
In general, though, this formula works when referencing both primary and secondary sources in the bibliography. A complete citation should look like this example:
Tipton, William.
If you’re familiar with how to write a research paper in Chicago style, you might remember that you have two options for in-text citations: the author-date method and the footnote method.
The author-date method is the simplest. Just put the image creator’s last name and the year of origin in parentheses, directly in the text after the relevant passage, like this:
(Last name of creator Year or origin)
(Tipton 1870)
The footnote system is a little more involved and uses two different types of footnotes, the full note and the short note.
Use a full note the first time a source is referenced in a paper. For images, the full note mostly follows the same formula as the bibliography entry, except that information is separated by commas instead of periods and the creator’s name is written normally as “First name Last name.” Don’t forget the footnote number at the beginning.
1. William Tipton, Fortifications on Little Round Top, 1870, photograph, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2018652217.
All other references after the first use a short note. The short note for images follows this format:
#. Last name of creator, Image title.
In practice, it should look like this:
1. Tipton, Fortifications on Little Round Top.
That covers the basics of how to cite an image in Chicago style, at least from online sources. However, sources like print media, museums, or art galleries follow different citation guidelines, so below we cover the particular rules for those. At the end, we explain how to reproduce an image in your paper using image captions in Chicago style.
How to cite images from a text in Chicago style
Images from print media have special concerns for citations. You’re not just citing the creator of the work, but also the author of the book that features the work.
For the bibliography entry, follow this formula for how to cite images from a book in Chicago style:
Last name of creator, First name.
Note that if the book author is the same as the image creator, you only need to list their name once at the beginning. A complete example should look like this:
del Sarto, Andrea.
In-text citations using the author-date method follow the same formulas as other sources, like so:
(del Sarto 1525)
If you’re using the footnote method, your full note should instead follow this formula:
#. First name Last name of image creator,
Again, the full note separates information with commas, which is different from bibliography entries that use periods. In practice, it should look like this:
1. Andrea del Sarto,
How to cite an image from a museum or gallery in Chicago style
You don’t need a copy of an image to use it as a source. The formula for how to cite a photo that you saw in a museum or art gallery in Chicago style is just a small tweak on the original formula we listed at the top:
Last name of creator, First name.
Note that if you viewed the image on a museum’s website, be sure to include the URL at the end of the citation. If you viewed the image in person, no URL is needed.
In practice, your bibliography citation should look like this:
Klimt, Gustav.
In-text citations in the author-date format follow the standard guidelines:
(Klimt 1909)
Full notes for citing images from museums follow this formula:
#. First name Last name of creator,
1. Gustav Klimt,
How to write an image caption in Chicago style
If you want to reproduce someone else’s image in your paper, you have to be careful to avoid different types of plagiarism. A carefully written photo caption in Chicago style adequately credits the original creator, as long as you include all the necessary information.
For starters, all images in Chicago style are referred to as “figures” and are numbered sequentially as “Fig. 1,” “Fig. 2,” etc. Sometimes you see figures broken up by chapter or section, like “Fig. 1.1,” “Fig. 1.2,” etc.
After the figure name, the rest of the information follows this formula:
Fig. #.
In practice, your image caption in Chicago style should look like this:
Fig. 1. The Kiss. Painting by Gustav Klimt, 1909. Belvedere, Vienna.
