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Now What?: Photographers Over There
Q. I have a number of pictures of my family taken by foreign photographers. How can I date them? A. Dating a photograph by establishing when the photographer was in business is an essential part of photo identification. This research can assign a time frame for the image and ultimately help you identify the individuals in the picture. You can find the photographer's imprint in a number of places, depending on the type of image. It's commonly found on the bottom edge of the photograph or on the back. Some photographers embossed the lower corner of an image with their name. Imprints usually include the photographer's surname and city where he or she worked.
Foreign photographs add another wrinkle, of course. When researching foreign photographers you may need a language dictionary to help you decipher any printing or writing on the image. The town name will also need translating: For instance, Copenhagen can appear as Kjobenhavn in the imprint. Finding the locality in an atlas or gazetteer can uncover the country in which the photographer worked. Just keep in mind that many place names changed or disappeared during political upheavals.
You can attempt to research the photographer by using as much of the name as appeared on the image. Two excellent resources can help: The International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House has an online database of photographers at www.eastman.org/4_educ/gehdata.html. Peter Palmquist's Photographers: A Sourcebook for Historical Research (Carl Mautz Publishing, out of print) contains a bibliography of directories of photographers from all over the world.
You can also use city directories and census records if they are available for the location you're researching. The WorldGenWeb project www.worldgenweb.org can help you become familiar with the availability of those resources for a particular country. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints publishes a series of guides to conducting country-specific research. These guides are available in print for a nominal cost or on the Web at www.familysearch.org.
If your initial attempts to locate the photographer fail, try using the online genealogy search engines offered by Family Tree Magazine's SuperSearch, Genealogy.com at www.genealogy.com and Ancestry.com at www.ancestry.com. For example, a search for photographer Johannes Peterson of Copenhagen yielded leads using several of the above searching tools.
Researching the photographer is only one of the ways to date a photograph. Costume clues, genealogical research, and photographic methods can also help. For more photo-identification techniques see my article "Picture Puzzles" in the August 2000 Family Tree Magazine.
—Maureen A. Taylor
Maureen A. Taylor is the author of Uncovering Your Ancestry through Family Photographs (Betterway Books, $18.99). She writes a Web-exclusive column, where she helps users identify their old family photos.
Send questions to Now What?, nowwhat@familytreemagazine.com. Or write to: Family Tree
Magazine, 1507 Dana Ave., Cincinnati, OH 45207. Sorry, we can't respond personally or answer all questions.
For more genealogy solutions, see the October 2000 issue of Family Tree Magazine.
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