Identifying Old Photos By Costume WW2 Wedding. Post 447

 

Could you identify this photo? I did. it is the nineteen forties. London. Probably at the Rembrandt hotel, where the wedding took place. Or at the phtographer's studio. But there was not much time and opportunity for travelling around. I think there was petrol rationing. The reception was interrupted by a siren so everybody had to rush down the nearest tube station. The jacket was made in a hurry by the groom's father, because the original was stolen. How do I know this? Read on.

First, what's in it for you? Lessons learned - how to label photos.

Tips On Laabelling Photos

1 Make sure each travel photo is labelled with the date, country, and the people shown.  

Don't write on the back, especially not over faces or features. If you must write, write along the back of a white edging strip. Indentations of the tip of a pen such as a biro will show through. You can edit out shadows, but this is a time-wasting nuisance. I worked in a photo agency where we were taught to instead write on the back of a sticky label attached to the back. 

Some sticky address labels lose their stikiness and dry out. Important photos of weddings often have a folded card covering the front or back, with the front protected by acid free tissue paper.

The label contents

Why do you need a label?

Let me tell you about two incidents.

1 Wedding Photos

a I went to the 80th birthday party of a distant relative. An elderly gentlemen produced a stack of photos of his family. Mostly people I did not know. People related by marriage. Poeple who died before I was born. Friends of people I hardly knew. People in the room when they were younger, hardly recognizable. I glanced at them and listened politely. This went on for five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes. 

Then we reached the last half dozen. He said, "I don't know who these are. Don't supposed you know. You don't want to see them, do you?"

As they say, in for a penny, in for a pound. "Yes, I do," I replied, politely.

He said, "I've no idea who these people are."

I gasped, "That's my parents! I know my mother."

"Yes, of course. I know my parents!"

He said, "They are very smartly dressed, him in a top hat. I wonder what the occasion was."

I replied, "It must be their wedding. It's in the Forties. Before I was born."

He looked at it 

"But she isn't in a white dress."

"No. She was a widow. Her fist husband died in a plane in the war in El Alamein, around 1941. In those days brides did not wear white to a second wedding. Besides, fabric was rationed. brides only wore white if they could afford, and obtain, white parachute silk. I don't suppose she would have wanted to wear parachute silk."

He blinked. I was blinking even faster. 

He asked, "Would you like this photo. You don't already have the same one?"

"No. I've never seen it before. I'd be very glad to have it. Thank you so much."

If that photo had been labelled, it could have been easily identified, and maybe given to me much earlier. 

As soon as I got home, I labelled the photo with my parents names, my mother's maiden name, their birth dates, wedding date, and death dates. When my son, or daughter-in=law, or grand-daughter, eventaully receive, inherit all my photos, I want them to know that picture is of the relatives, ancestors, and should be recorded and / or kept.

2 Funeral Photos

For my mother's funeral, and the reception afterwards, I wanted a good picture of her looking at her best, and happy. I meticously went throguh every photo in my father's three shoe boxes of family photos, mostly of holidays.

Most of the photos showed my mother full length, against a monument, with no close ups of her face. These were useful travel and history documents, although I had to ask my father to identify the places. Sometimes he could not remember. However, the unlabelled phtoto pile started to diminish as I matched up the clothes. If my mother had an identifying feature, a yellow dress, or a straw handbag and hat, in a photo which was beside a signpost or museum or landmark, the other photos with her in the same clothes were from the same holiday, the same place, the same year. 

3 My Talk On Family Photos

I gave a talk about how you should label your family photos. When I got home, I got out my own wedding photo. It was not labelled!

By this time, both my parents and my husband's parents had died. My grand-daughter never met any of the four great-grandparents, so she would not be able to identify them She is small and can barely understand what is a great grandparent. One day she might be really pleased to have a photo from so far back (for her) and the stories which go with it. That photo has her grandparents at their wedding, much ounger than when she first met them, plus four great-grandparents.

Sometimes a make of car would identify the country, or the decade. 

You can do a search for a date, or an image serach of a type of costume or car.

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