Tracing Your Ancestors Through Family Photographs: A Complete Guide for Family and Local Historians

Jayne Shrimpton’s complete guide to dating, analyzing and understanding family photographs is essential reading and reference for anyone undertaking genealogical and local history research. Using over 150 old photographs as examples, she shows how such images can give a direct insight into the past and into the lives of the individuals who are portrayed in them.

Almost every family and local historian works with photographs, but often the fascinating historical and personal information that can be gained from them is not fully understood. They are one of the most vivid and memorable ways into the past.

This concise but comprehensive guide describes the various types of photograph and explains how they can be dated. It analyses what the clothes and style of dress can tell us about the people in the photographs, their circumstances and background.

Sections look at photographs of special occasions – baptisms, weddings, funerals - and at photographs taken in wartime, on holiday and at work. There is advice on how to identify the individuals shown and how to find more family photographs through personal connections, archives and the internet - and how to preserve them for future generations.

Jayne Shrimpton’s handbook is an authoritative, accessible guide to old photographs that no family or local historian can be without.

Jayne Shrimpton is a professional dress historian, portrait specialist and 'photo detective'. She has post-graduate academic qualifications from the Courtauld Institute of Art and work experience as a former curator in the Heinz Archive and Library at the National Portrait Gallery, London. She works mainly in the family history arena, conducting private photograph work, lecturing widely and writing regular photograph columns and fashion history articles. Her most recent publications are Family Photographs and How to Date Them, How to Get the Most from Family Pictures and British Working Dress: Occupational Clothing 1750-1950.