How long copyright lasts in a photograph

What follows is the shape of the question in the United Kingdom, written to help you know when to worry. It is not legal advice, and for any specific photograph where money or exposure is involved, it should be checked properly.

The general rule

For a photograph taken under the current framework, copyright lasts for the life of the photographer plus seventy years, counted from the end of the calendar year in which they died.

Two things follow that people miss.

It runs from the death of the photographer, not from the date of the photograph. A picture taken by someone at twenty-five who lived to ninety is protected for well over a century.

It is the photographer, not the owner of the print and not the commissioner. Buying a photograph buys an object. Commissioning one does not, by itself, transfer the copyright — that requires an assignment in writing.

Why old photographs are complicated

Copyright law has been rewritten several times, and each rewrite carried forward transitional rules for works created under the previous one.

The practical consequence is that photographs from before the current framework are governed by provisions that depend on when the photograph was taken, whether it had been published, and whether the term had already expired when the law changed. The outcomes are not intuitive and they are not uniform: photographs of similar vintage can have different terms.

The correct instinct with a pre-war or mid-century photograph is therefore not "this is old, so it is free" but "this needs checking against the rules for its period". That check is a real piece of work and it is the reason picture desks keep a note of it once it has been done.

Unknown authorship

Where the photographer genuinely cannot be identified after a reasonable search, a different term applies — one measured from creation or from first making available to the public, rather than from a death nobody can date.

This is the provision that covers much of what an archive actually holds. It does not mean unattributed photographs are free; it means the term is calculated differently. And it requires the search: the rule applies where the author cannot be ascertained by reasonable inquiry, which is a standard you have to meet rather than assert.

Where the search fails and the term has not expired, the photograph is an orphan work and the question becomes one of risk management rather than clearance.

Publication status matters

Whether and when a photograph was first made available to the public affects the calculation in several of these cases.

For an archive this is frequently the hardest fact to establish. A negative in a file may have been published at the time, may have been published later in a book, or may never have been seen outside the building. The record usually does not say.

Where it matters and cannot be established, treat the photograph as protected. The alternative is a decision resting on an assumption that nobody wrote down.

Two rights, not one

A photograph carries copyright, and the photographer also has moral rights — notably the right to be identified as the author and to object to derogatory treatment of the work.

Moral rights operate separately from copyright ownership. A publication that has properly acquired the copyright can still get the credit wrong, and that is a distinct wrong with a distinct remedy.

Territory

Copyright is national. A photograph out of copyright in one country may be protected in another, and a website is read everywhere.

For a publication with an international audience, the relevant term is not necessarily the one where the archive sits. This does not usually change the decision, but it changes the size of the risk, and it is worth knowing which way it cuts before publishing something on the strength of expiry.

What to record

The whole point of doing this work is not to do it twice.

Against each asset, record the photographer if known, the date of capture, the publication status if established, the conclusion about copyright status, the date that conclusion was reached, and who reached it. Add a review date where the conclusion was "protected" — terms do expire, and an archive that never revisits its determinations keeps treating public-domain material as restricted.

An asset with a blank copyright field means unknown. It does not mean free, and a library that does not distinguish the two will eventually publish on the basis of a blank.

Conclusion

Life plus seventy from the photographer's death is the general rule; older photographs fall under transitional provisions that have to be checked for their period; unknown authorship has its own term and requires a genuine search; publication status frequently matters and is frequently unrecorded. Age alone establishes nothing. Record each determination with its date so that the work is done once, and take advice where the use is significant.