A frustrating family photo collection.

[AndrewA]

I just want an outlet for my frustration over my family collection of photo albums i have managed to get my hands on today.
. I literally have thousands of photos dating from the late 20s to 60s, the whole lot is here, weddings, honeymoons, holidays, family gatherings and so on. The frustrating thing is that the only information written down are place names for the holiday snaps. Problems is no one is alive who could have identified these people.

There was one little ray of sunshine, a studio portrait photo from 1912 which had been displayed in frame with glass pane, I had to remove this picture as mould was growing on inside of glass. fortunately a cardboard mount around the photo had protected it. My Aunt had told me she thought it was picture of her father, my grandfather, but shows how memory isnt that great, as someone had actully written on the back that it was my grandmother aged 18months!

It really is a shame how people overlook the obvious thing to write peoples names down. Something we should all remember to do.

[SRD]

True, but there's an awful lot of detective work one can do; weddings are good starts as one has parents & children, often together as 'the brides family', 'the grooms family' etc. Then picking out faces as they age through the generations is possible. Unmarried aunts and uncles can be pinpointed as they float around on the outskirts of family groups. Soldiers can be tracked down by their uniforms. Another pose I've found was the female line; baby, mother, grandmother & great-grandmother.
Another source of info can be family friends, I discovered the cousin of a friend of my grandparents who had some photos of my grandparents & others with names on.

[MarkCDodd]

There is some fairly good face recognition software that is either free or cheap.

The ratio of a face alters little with age so from early childhood onwards software can pick an individual as long as the photograph is of reasonable quality and contrast.

So it is fairly easy to find a series of photos belonging to an individual and as long as you can figure out who he/she is, the rest is logic.