The use of archive images is widespread. As Alan Sekula points out these images are often taken out of context and re-purposed. Sometimes this is a good thing as the images can have polysemous meanings that the original photographer or curator may not have seen or intended. But there is also a danger that archives can be used to maintain a point of view that is inherently biased. Images that were made for propaganda purposes (including commercial work) can be removed from context and used as an historical document of fact. This can be very dangerous if these images start to appear to show a version of history without their original context.
In an archive all images become equal; or as Sekula more eloquently states:
"Visual differences can be homogenised out of existence when negatives first printed as industrial glossies and others printed on flat paper and tinted by hand are subjected to a uniform standard of printing for reproduction in a book. Thus the difference between a mode of pictorial address which is primarily 'informational' and one which is 'sentimental' is obscured. in this sense, archives establish a relation of abstract visual equivalence". Sekula ().
Unfortunately with mass globalisation and the fast moving pace of information it feels that media organisations are less inclined to strictly verify the source of images as much as they used to.
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