BUMPER GUIDE
PHOTO-DATING SPECIAL
Sometimes old family photographs are hard to identify – enigmatic images of unfamiliar faces and places.
Establishing an accurate date is key to successful interpretation and further research. This feature explains how to date old photographs using recognised techniques:
• identifying the format;
• dating card mounts;
• researching photographic studios;
• dating our ancestors’ appearance.
FORMATS
Identifying the format of a photograph should be foremost, as each type of photographic image was in production for a specific time period.
Daguerreotypes: 1840s/1850s
The first commercially-produced photographs were daguerreotypes – expensive one-off images on a silvered copper plate. Sometimes handcoloured, they have a polished, mirrorlike surface, the image fluctuating between positive and negative when tilted. Usually protected in a folding case, most British daguerreotypes span the mid-1840s to late-1850s. Obsolete here by c1860, few survive in UK family collections.
This re-touched daguerreotype, dated September 1849, illustrates the narrow frock coat, wide black cravat and bushy sideburns typical of the 1840s/early to mid-1850s
Ambrotypes: studio ambrotypes c1855-1863, outdoor ambrotypes to c1890