View unpublished (not posted) attachments while logged out?

So I’m building an image gallery here: https://atlas.damonzucconi.com/
using this gallery widget: https://blog.splash.de/2008/05/16/gallery-widget/

(i want to be able to upload images and them just be viewable without posting anything and there doesn’t seem to be a way to simply view all the attachments on one page. this widget was the only thing that i could find to handle it.)

everything was going along swimmingly until I logged out and realized that you can’t view any of the attachments once you are logged out.

i noticed that if the attachment is inserted into a post that it then can be viewed in this way.

– one that is attached to a post first: https://atlas.damonzucconi.com/?attachment_id=549
– one that isn’t attached to a post: https://atlas.damonzucconi.com/?attachment_id=519

so i am assuming that there is just some permission or something that is being changed in the database? anyway to turn that off so that any unpublished attachment is viewable?

thanks!