Working with a copy of a photograph

QAs a subscriber to Family Tree magazine, I find one of the most interesting parts of the magazine the questions page, especially the photograph queries. I am currently writing up my family tree and thus sorting through all the family pictures that I possess. The picture (see right) has us puzzled. I cannot identify the couple, although the lady has similar features to my mother – it is not her: she was born in 1924. On the back of the picture appears to be the date 19/7/50 but I do not think that it can have originated in 1950. I think the picture came from my grandma who married in 1914, but the lady is not her either. The man may be her brother Thomas Henry Jackson, who married in 1911. Can you please provide a time-scale for the picture, which then may help me to identify these past family members? David Bretherton

AThank you: we receive many different pictures from readers! Your scanned image appears to show a copy of a formal studio photograph. The original photographic image was probably presented on a postcard mount – postcard portraits being the most popular format of the early-mid 20th century. However, this is not the original photograph: it may well be an enlargement (dimensions not given); either way, as we see from the image quality, it has been substantially retouched to enhance the picture. This might also explain the brown card mount and the pencilled notations: this copy was probably made 19th July 1950, answering your query over the date, which, as you suspected, is not when the photograph originated.

When was the original photo taken?

We can estimate the time frame of the original photograph from the appearance of these ancestors, although we only have a short head and shoulders view, with limited dress details on display. The young man wears an army service uniform that looks to me typical of the First World War but I believe the pattern dated back to 1902 (a military expert could confirm this), so the army tunic seen here could theoretically pre-date WW1. Meanwhile, the lady wears a white blouse, which would have been teamed with a tailored skirt – the usual every day and semi-formal female outfit by the 1910s. Her neckline is no longer the high choker-like Edwardian collar, but a lower style set off by a flat collar. This dates her appearance firmly to at least 1911 and I suspect the year is early-mid 1910s, but without further fashion clues, I feel we should consider the period 19111920, in order to include all possible years.

Which relations might fit the datespan?

You now have an accurate, if rather broad date for this photograph, which does indeed rule out your mother, born later in 1924. Usually a young man and lady posing together in the studio like this would be newly-weds, their photograph serving as a simple wedding portrait taken after the church or registry office service. The date range means that the young couple here could either represent your grandmother and her new husband, who married in 1914 (hence the army uniform?); alternatively, it may have originated a few years earlier and represent her brother, Thomas Henry Jackson (married 1911): both wedding dates could fit. I realise that you feel this is not your grandmother, but you might want to consider whether you really would recognise her in a retouched photograph as a young woman so long ago.

Siblings perhaps?

There is a further possibility: that these could be a brother and sister photographed together just before the soldier went off to war. Wartime did prompt some close blood relatives to visit the studio together for a keepsake photograph. I also suggest this here partly because both are wearing spectacles at an unusually young age – and at a time when corrective glasses were far less common than today and then being expensive, with no NHS. Could poor eyesight have been a family trait? I also wonder if the July ‘50 date of the copy photo was significant. JS