Photographs

Just a thought. This may be impossible to answer but I thought I'd ask
anyway.

Martin Brown...

I'll try, but you should check any dates.

Is as good a place to start as any. But for the UK our history is much
more closely tied to our local photographic industry at Ilford (later
Ciba Geigy).

As I understand it, photography as we know it today has evolved over
the last 150-200 years from Daguerrotypes up to modern digital images.
Does anyone have any ideas what things can be used as pointers to the
age of a picture?

Martin Brown...

If they are taken at home stuff in the background can help date an
image. In studio photographs the type of backcloth varies somewhat with
era but they tend to be much harder (OTOH some studios put negative
details and maybe a date stamp on the reverse side of the print)

Very old prints you can sometimes date by the media used and signs of
degradation.

bg998...

This won't help you in your own quest, but you might be interested to know
that there is a 2-volume book called "The Ontario Photographers List"
which details the years during which many photographers were in business
in the Canadian province of Ontario during the period 1851-1925. It
covers all the major cities and towns in Ontario. It has been a big help
in my own research.

I have often wished that someone would do the same thing for
Northumberland, or at least Newcastle on Tyne, as I have a number of
unidentified photographs of probable relatives from that area. In many
cases all that is known is the name and address of the photographer.

... Martin

Benjamin S. Beck...

What about 'Professional Photographers in Newcastle, Gateshead and
Sunderland 1873-1920', by S. Eva & K. Eva, 'Supplement to The
PhotoHistorian', July 1997 (ISSN 0957-0209)?

Apart from styles of clothing and any background clues, when did studio
photography start to become affordable to ordinary folk (ok, middle
classes)? When did sepia tint lose favour and black and white really

Martin Brown...

I have found publicity photos for some of my publican ancestors that are
from around ~1900. One even has a direct relative GGGGM and possibly
my infant GGM on it. By the looks of it some enterprising photographer
went the length of the high street and persuaded every shop owner to
have one done! They are all very formulaic "proud shop owner stiffly in
front of premises". School photos go back a long way too in some areas.

Some are even online and were fairly commonplace by 1910 - Nuneaton
library has a very nice indexed millenium collection of local images.

come into its own? When was colour first affordable? When did cameras

Martin Brown...

Sepia goes in and out of fashion. So don't rely on it for dating. Silver
images or sepia toned (other colours are possible) are very robust
provided they were properly fixed. However, not all domestic images were
that well processed and some may not be entirely light stable showing
coloured marks from traces of chemicals. Don't leave originals in sunlight!

Martin Brown...

1950's for enthusiasts. Earlier for the super rich later for the general
public. The limitation was having a decent quality fast achromatic lens
for sharp colour images (they were very expensive early on).

become affordable for "ordinary folk"? Does the size or shape of a
print have any bearing (these days the standard is 7x5, 10 yrs ago it
was 6x4, before that 5x31/2, but before that?)? My wife has some b&w
prints that were hand-coloured by her mother. Was this common
practice?

Martin Brown...

Very. Postcard sized prints of my village survive from WWI and earlier.
Some of them were printed in Germany and hand tinted there! The
monochrome ones were done at Stockton-upon-Tees. DIY photo postcards
were quite common in the 1920s (I expect printed by the chemist).

The oldest photo sizes were full-plate (81/2x61/2), half plate and
quarter plate (which date from the old glass plate cameras). And the
earliest mass produced consumer cameras were Kodaks box Brownie from
1900 on.

You tend to get a fair number of contact prints in ordinary private
collections of old photos (they lok very sharp if the camera was half
decent and scan well enough at 1200dpi to make a 5x7 print from a 21/4"
rollfilm negative).

I ask because there are many photos in our inherited collections that
are unidentified - and knowing roughly when they were taken might help
- even if only by elimination. Don't you wish they'd had the foresight
to write names/dates on the back ? :-)

Martin Brown...

Some of them do, but Auntie Nelly isn't entirely helpful (a nickname).
Incidentally. Did someone say "Polly" is a nickname for Mary?

Always worth looking for faint pencil marks on the backs.

Hope this helps.

Martin Brown

Brenda Orsler...

Very helpful crowd and friendly

ken dilley...

Check out the wikapedia entries for photography it's got a full history.
including dates etc.