PICTURE ANALYSIS
Q My mother-in-law gave me this photograph on a glass plate a couple of years ago. She had no idea who it is of, or where it was taken, or when. I have asked all our relations on that side of the family, and they have no idea either. Can you help?
Sue Thornley
A As far as I can tell from the scan, this photographic image on a glass plate is an ambrotype or, correctly, a collodion positive. This was a 19th-century photographic format produced by studio photographers in the 1850s/early 1860s, before being superseded by carte de visiteprints. However, traditional glass ambrotypes remained popular with open-air photographers until c1890, and many late Victorian examples like this, set outdoors in natural surroundings, survive today. Unfortunately they were seldom labelled or annotated, and further historical clues usually have to be gleaned from the visual image.
This professional photograph depicts a large group posing in a wooded setting, everyone wearing smart, fashionable clothes, including outdoor items. They could conceivably all be related, but most are males in their 20s to 40s, there are few women and only four minors: not a typical extended family group scene. Rather, excepting the infants, they may be work colleagues/company staff, or members of a local church or a social/special-interest club. Nothing here reveals the location, but the image is dateable from the group’s appearance to around 1882–1886, a timeframe that might indicate candidates from among your mother-in-law’s late Victorian ancestors – and could even suggest a likely context for the photograph.
