Most of us have old photos of strangely dressed people looking stern in a photo album or box somewhere. If you’re really lucky, they’ve been meticulously labeled with the names of the people in the photo and the date it was taken. Maybe even the place too! A lot of the time though, we’re left guessing but with a little learning we can start to fill in the blanks and find out what your old photos tell you about your ancestors.
Let’s begin with a little background.
Before photography, if you were wealthy you could get an artist to paint you but for something a little easier on the purse strings you had options too. Self-portrait (photo 1), miniatures (photo 2), silhouettes (photo 3) and my personal favourite for it’s ingenuity the physionotrace (photo 4) (take a look at the YouTube link below to see how it works) were all popular.
Many people also collected keepsakes to remind them of their friends and family like letters and diaries (those lucky literate people!), locks of hair (photo 5) or even jewelry crafted from a dead loved one’s hair (photo 6). It’s a little creepy to us these days but with no selfies to gaze upon, ya gotta get inventive!
Next week we’ll get into the early days of photography.
Check out this great video on the creative things people did before photography!
Kindred Secrets 