About WikiPortraits Studio

The Problem

Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects prioritize and require using freely-licensed images. As most published photos of notable people are press images with full copyright and non-permissive licenses, this results in a significant number of biographies with poor quality or no photos.

This hasn't gone unnoticed, having been covered by various publications including the New York Times in their 2009 article, "Wikipedia May Be a Font of Facts, but It’s a Desert for Photos". While that article was written more than a decade ago, the problem persists.

The Solution

An effective way to gather freely-licensed photos of notable figures at-scale is to go to where they are!

WikiPortraits was created in order to accomplish this, by hosting events at conferences, festivals, and more to fill this gap. At these events, we sometimes set up a photo booth where anyone with a Wikipedia page—speaker or not—may drop by and have their photo taken. We also send roaming photographers to capture press lines, panels and keynotes.

Among the events our photographers have captured: Sundance Film Festival 2024, SXSW 2024, Cannes Film Festival 2024, Edinburgh Fringe 2024, Venice Film Festival 2024, Toronto International Film Festival 2024, and the Pulitzer Prizes.