Dating victorian photos

My Favorite 10 Resources for Dating Old Photographs

Dating old photographs can be difficult at times. Explore resources for dating cabinet cards, daguerreotypes and other old family photos. Relatives started cleaning out their closets and sending me the old family photographs! I received literal boxes of family photographs. The challenge began when I realized a number of photographs were not labeled, and I had no idea who the individuals were. I had to learn how to analyze those old family photos. The first step was to learn how to date those photographs.

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In my blog about Victorian studio portraits, I mentioned various methods of dating old, unidentified family photographs, with special emphasis on analysing the fashion clues. By contrast, the appearance of our ancestors and relatives as they posed for the camera cannot be mistaken: their clothes and accessories were real and of their time, providing an accurate contemporary visual record. The dress of the past as seen in photographs never lies, but recognising the garments, hats and hairstyles key to image dating requires a well-trained eye. Family photographs are precious heirlooms that deserve due consideration, so knowing the historical parameters, with reference to dated photographic examples and through an understanding of dress, age, status and place, is invaluable. This is an informed introduction to dating fashion in Edwardian and WW1-era photographs, In the earlys, the feminine ideal was a shapely hourglass silhouette, expressed in a separate blouse and skirt or formal bodice and co-ordinating skirt.

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Commercial portrait photography began in the s and old family photographs can portray ancestors from the early-Victorian era onwards. Many historic photos surviving today are undated and unidentified and we can use various methods to work out their time period:. This can help, but studio data may be elusive, patchy or too broad to pinpoint a close date for a given photograph. All available evidence should be considered, but often most useful for accurate photo dating are the picture clues, especially the fashions worn by their subjects: clothes, accessories and hairstyles.

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How to date family photographs

The great success the magazine has enjoyed has lead to the publication of The Family Chronicle Collection and subsequent four Family Chronicle Years titled Year respectively. Each book is a compendium of the articles from each year of Family Chronicle so readers need not miss the best of the magazine. Other book titles include the enormously popular Dating Old Photographs , a proven tool to assist with discovering the dates of undated family photographs, and Family Chronicle's Introduction to Genealogy, an excellent companion to any newcomer to the field of genealogy.

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