How to Date an Old Photograph in Six Steps

Most family photographs arrive with no date and no names, which is a shame, because the date is usually sitting in the image itself.

Archivists work through the same sequence every time. It is worth learning, because it turns a box of anonymous faces into something you can actually place.

Step one: identify the process

The physical object tells you a great deal before you look at the picture at all.

A photograph on a polished metal plate, held in a small hinged case, and appearing as a negative or a positive depending on the viewing angle, is a daguerreotype — a process used mainly from the 1840s to the 1850s. An image on glass backed with dark varnish is an ambrotype, which largely replaced it in the later 1850s. An image on thin iron is a tintype, cheap and common from the 1860s onwards and still used at fairgrounds much later.

A print on paper mounted on card is the most common survival, and dates from the 1860s onwards.

Step two: measure the mount

For card-mounted prints, the format is a reliable rough guide.

A small card roughly 6 by 10 centimetres is a carte de visite, at its most popular from the early 1860s into the 1880s. A larger card around 11 by 17 centimetres is a cabinet card, which took over from the 1870s and continued to around 1910.

Then look at the card itself. Early mounts are thin, with square corners and simple printing. Later ones get thicker, often with rounded or bevelled corners, coloured edges, and increasingly elaborate printed decoration on the reverse. Photographers’ backmarks generally get more ornate over time.

Step three: read the studio address

If there is a photographer’s name and address, that is often the single most precise clue available.

Trade directories, census records and local history collections can frequently tell you exactly which years a studio operated at a specific address. A studio that moved premises in 1893 gives you a hard boundary.

Step four: date the clothing

Clothing is the most informative element in the picture, and the details that matter are structural rather than decorative.

For women, look at the silhouette: where the fullness of the skirt sits, how wide the shoulders are, the shape and size of the sleeve head, the height of the collar, and how the hair is dressed. Sleeve shape in particular changes markedly across the nineteenth century and is one of the fastest-moving indicators.

For men, look at the lapel width and roll, the number of buttons, the collar height and style, and the presence or absence of facial hair fashions.

One caution: people wore their best clothes to a studio, and best clothes were often several years old. Clothing tends to give you an earliest-possible date more reliably than a latest-possible one.

Step five: read the background

Studio backdrops and props follow fashions too — painted scenery, balustrades, rustic stiles, potted palms and particular chairs all move in and out of use.

If the photograph is outdoors, the background is even better. Shop signs, street furniture, vehicles, road surfaces, posters and advertisements can often be dated precisely, and a single legible poster can pin a photograph to a season.

Step six: place the people

Once you have a range, work with the family.

Estimate ages from appearance, cautiously, and check them against births, marriages and deaths in the records. Look at who is present and who is absent. A family group photographed in mourning dress, or a gap where a spouse should be, is often dating the picture for you.

The mistake to avoid

The caption on the back is evidence, not fact. Captions are frequently added decades later by someone working from memory, and the most common errors are confusing two siblings and being out by a generation.

Where the caption and the sleeves disagree, trust the sleeves.