Imagine you are browsing through a family photo album. Oh look, there is great aunt Matilda. And there’s dad when he was a little boy. And there’s . . . uh, someone. Who is that?

It’s an old black-and-white photo. Is it of a relative? Or a family friend? When was it taken, and where?

Last week I revisited a book called Forensic Genealogy by Colleen Fitzpatrick and shared two of the three techniques she uses to identify people in a photo. The two techniques I wrote about were looking at the photo and in the photo.

Looking at the photo means what shape is it, and what is it printed on, etc., then consulting a history of photography to get an idea of what sort of camera might have been used and when that type of camera was popular. That could help narrow down the dates.

The second technique is to look in the photo. That is, what can you see in addition to the people? Are there cars, magazines, a cash register, a house number, a street sign, a railroad crossing? Such things can be researched to help determine the location and date of a photograph.

This week, I’ll talk about the third technique: looking behind a photo. That is, looking at the back of it. Sometimes the names of people in the photo are written there. Or a name and date of an event. ‘Joan’s wedding, 1937’ for example. Maybe you are sure the picture is not of Aunt Joan, but a little research could tell you the exact date and place of her wedding. Maybe you can even come up with a guest list.

Knowing the date a picture was taken and an estimate of a person’s age might help determine who it could or could not be.

What if you look at the back of a photo and can tell something had been written there, but it’s faded beyond legibility? There are techniques to restore the writing without endangering the photo. One of the simplest is to take a picture of the back of the photo and load the picture into an editing program. Adjusting settings such as contrast and the shadows and highlights in the histogram settings could make the faded writing legible enough to read.

You don’t need to invest in an expensive photo editing program to do this. There are plenty of free ones (GIMP, for instance) that will do the job. And there are many videos online that show how to restore old, faded photographs. (Pictures of the photos, not the original photos themselves.) Those techniques can sometimes work on the backs of photos.

There are also places online where you can upload a picture, and AI (artificial intelligence, which on the whole I am leery of at this point) might help with the identification. One trustworthy service is the My Heritage website. There is a membership fee, but perhaps it would be worth it.

Lastly, label your own family photos so they are not a mystery a generation or two from now.

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