MLA citations

Cite images like other sources, providing as much information as you have available. See MLA Handbook Chapter 5 for more information. The container is the platform that holds the source you are looking at -- like a website with an image or a database with an image. If you are viewing a painting or photograph in person, then the museum would be the container. Where you are viewing the image is very important to how you will cite it.

Image Viewed in Person

• Container - the physical location the image is in

Bearden, Romare. The Train. 1975, Museum of Modern Art, New York City.

Cameron, Julia Margaret. Alfred, Lord Tennyson. 1866, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.

Image Viewed Online

• Container - the website

Bearden, Romare. The Train. 1975. MOMA, www.moma.org/collection/works/65232?locale=en.

Frank, Robert. Fans at a movie premiere, Los Angeles. 1955. Danziger Gallery. https://www.danzigergallery.com/artists/robert-frank?

view=slider#10. 

Image Viewed in a Database/JSTOR

• Container - the database

Bearden, Romare. The Train. 1975, JSTOR, https://jstor.org/stable/community.10592543.

Frank, Robert. Platte River, Tennessee. 1961, JSTOR, https://jstor.org/stable/community.22370484.

Image Viewed in a Book

• Container - the book

Edwards, Melvin. Tambo. 1993, Smithsonian American Art Museum. African American Masters, by Gwen Everett, Harry N. Abrams Inc.

Publishers, 2003, p. 35.

Velazquez, Diego. An Old Woman Cooking Eggs. Circa 1618, Scottish National Gallery. The Vanishing Velazquez: A Nineteenth-Century

Bookseller's Obsession with a Lost Masterpiece, by Laura Cumming, Scribner, 2016, p. 27.

For more information, look at the MLA Style Center How to Cite an Image

In general, you'll need to cite your sources in the same way in a presentation that you do in a paper. Any quotation or paraphrased section of text must have an in-text citation and an entry in the works cited page. Any images need to be credited to the creator.

Citation in prose - just mention the creator and work in your text

Parenthetical citation - (creator's last name) and if there is more than one work by the same creator (name of work, creator's last name)

If you are using an image/figure in your presentation or paper - use figure and caption (provide citation details but don't invert creator's name); if full bibliographic information is included with the image, then no works cited entry is required, but your instructor may ask for one.

Example:

Fig. 1 Romare Bearden. The Train. 1975, Museum of Modern Art, New York City.

Fig. 2 Melvin Edwards. Tambo. 1993, Smithsonian American Art Museum. 

Works Cited

Bearden, Romare. The Train. 1975, Museum of Modern Art, New York City.

Edwards, Melvin. Tambo. 1993, Smithsonian American Art Museum. African American Masters, by Gwen Everett, Harry N. Abrams Inc.

Publishers, 2003, p. 35.