Photo story prompts
Questions to ask about old family photos
Old prints lose their meaning one person at a time. The photo is fine; the people who can explain it are fewer every year. Take a handful of prints to the oldest relative who will sit with you, and ask these questions about one photo at a time.
Who
- Who is each person, from left to right?
- How are they related to each other, and to you?
- Who took the photo?
- Who should be in this picture but is not, and why?
Where and when
- Where was this taken? Whose house, which town?
- Roughly what year was it? What makes you think so?
- What was the occasion, or was it an ordinary day?
- Is the place still there? What is it now?
Why it mattered
- What was going on in the family at that time?
- What happened just before or just after the photo?
- What does this photo show that people today would not guess?
- Why do you think someone kept this one?
One tip
Write names on a separate card, never on the back of the print in ballpoint: the ink presses through and can smear onto the next photo in the pile.
Common questions
What should I ask about old family photos?
Ask three things about each photo: who is in it and how they are related, where and roughly when it was taken, and what was happening in the family at the time. Names come first, because they are lost first.
What if nobody alive knows who is in the photo?
Write down what can still be known: whose album it came from, the studio name on the mount, clothing and anything written on the back. Those details help a later relative or a local history group identify it.
More prompt sets
Photos with grandparents
Questions to ask a grandparent while they hold the photo.
12 questions
Wedding photos
The names and small disasters the album does not record.
12 questions
Baby's first year
A few words per photo, written while you still remember.
12 questions
A childhood home
Rooms, neighbours and routines, before the house is sold.
12 questions
One photo. Three answers. Two minutes.
Start with the print you would save from a fire. No account, nothing uploaded.