What are the generally accepted guidelines for using the Internet to help identify people in old photos?

Question

When I was looking through the family photos I ran across several pictures of people whose identities are complete mysteries. I have no idea who they are, or where or when the pictures were taken, but many are old enough that it's safe to assume that those included have died or are very, very old.

Some feel it's a violation of privacy for pictures of their relatives to be uploaded so that just about anyone can look at them, but surely there are some who know what their distant relatives look like and would like to see previously unseen pictures of them.

Information of even the slightest relevance is welcome, and referrals to helpful web pages are appreciated.

Answer 1

Honestly, uploading actual pictures to some site (even your own yahoo picture storage) I can't imagine would do any good whatsoever. To identify the person, someone would have to either have the same picture (or another picture of the same person), actually have gone to the source of your picture to see it, and recognize it once they have seen it. Exceptionally unlikely.

But alas, all is not lost.

For a picture, you can often do the same sort of detective work you have done in researching individuals and analyzing other records (a picture is a record).

Look for the photographer. Sometimes it is printed on the front of the photograph, sometimes stamped on the back. If the photograph is framed or mounted - CAREFULLY remove the photograph from the mounting and examine all parts for the studio or photographer. Then google it up! Sometimes you will now be able to find that a particular studio or photographer worked in a particular city at a particular time. That may help, when played against your genealogical information on individuals, determine who it may be.

There are also numerous places on the internet that deal with historical photographic methods. While different "photographic methods" were "invented" centuries ago, really what most people would call a photograph today would have an earliest date of maybe 1850. So if someone had died before 1850, the photo probably isn't them. But if you can identify the "style" of the photograph, you can futher limit the time frame. Even if it's a poloroid picture, you can find the history of poloroid cameras (film) and just comparing your photo with those presented, you may find that that particular format of photograph was only sold between 1970 and 1972.

One thing that can also be useful is to collect all the photographs of that person (of course assuming you have more than one in your collection). Sometimes you will see a landmark (building, park, theme park, historical site) in the picture. More clues. And you may be able to associate this unknown individual with multiple people you DO know. What commonalities do the other people have that might cause them to be associated with the unknown person.

But collecting all photographs of an individual in your collection can yield the best results. When just looking through photographs, you might not even recognize that an individual (maybe years apart) showed up in more than one photograph. And we just by nature tend to focus on individual photographs (or those with only maybe two people in them) and ones that catch our attention. When specifically looking for an individual, you often find photographs that you just overlooked or didn't pay much attention to when you were first going through them. But that badly focused group picture you didn't pay much attention to, might have "Harry" written on the back.

It's not easy by any means - but can be a lot of fun. It really is detective work when you get down to it.

Answer 2

DeadFred.com is a popular site that hosts pics that are unknown, as is ancientfaces.com.

What I've done is scan my family photos & e-mail them to extended family members - my gr-aunts (through their kids where they don't have computers), their cousins, and others. This has resulted in more ids, happiness for my relatives, and more pictures of the family being shared with me. I've also made a sheet of 6 still totally unidentified photos and sent it out with genealogy materials - this resulted in some names in group family photos some of which were contradictory, but also some firm ids (young children seem to be the hardest to recognize.)

You can also put photos on kodakgallery or other photo sites and limit who can access them, and still make it easy to share.