HOW TO DATE OLD PHOTOGRAPHS – TOM DOIG

We had visitors from Canada & Doncaster at our well attended July meeting.
Tom Doig the well known social historian demonstrated how to date photographs. His introduction told us how the first ‘photos’ were found in caves & were outline images of human hands . The hand was placed on the cave wall & ‘drawn’ around.
In 1810 images were produced by a person’s head, in profile, being lit to create a shadow. & creating a silhouette which was often cut out in black card.
Niépce, a Frenchman discovered a way of getting a picture onto paper, his first was of a roof top & the exposure time was 12 hours.
De Querre in about 1828 invented the daquerreotype process of photography, when the exposure time was less but the pictures faded very quickly .
Dating photos therefore can only be assessed when photos were mounted on glass & put into frames. As time passed the frame design went through changes.
In about 1850 the frames, oblong & mostly leather with infill fillets of ‘gold metal ‘ had side hinges which held a leather cover to protect the glass. Later these frames became more elaborate & the fillets were thicker & machined tooled. Still with leather covers, the inside of which was covered in crushed velvet & had a hook on the outside on which a watch could be hung. In 1859 the photos were surrounded by a plainer oval fillet & the edge of the frame was printed with a geometric design .
The photos remained in the negative form being stuck onto glass & the application of black mastic applied caused the optical illusion & created the positive picture. In 1856 new photo covers were made out of coal dust, milk & sulphuric acid which when mixed & dried created a ‘plastic’ like material which could be decorated by putting through a press containing plates of designs.
Occasionally dates can be worked out by the fashions of the day & Tom told us of several aids used to hold the client immobile for the long exposure times. & props & backcloths the photographers used.
Photography progressed with ‘cartes visite’, these were very small photos often taken with a four lens camera.
About 1865 photos as we know them were dated on the back with the photo number & photographer’s advertisement, some very elaborate
Tom suggested we should look at old photos much more closely as there is often a lot of information in them. As we enjoyed refreshments Tom was kept busy answering questions .
Tom will be at our Family history day on September 27th at St Peters Church hall Wisbech where he will be pleased to look at any of our old family pictures & give advice on them
Our AGM is on September 25th followed by a talk from our President Wim Zwalf on his unusual surname.
[Barbara Holmes]