Photographer – basic research

Gather together everything you know about your ancestor and their business.

Speak to other members of the family to find out what they can remember and whether they have any documents that might be useful – photographs of the premises, headed paper, letters or newspaper cuttings and, of course, photographs taken by the studio.

There is often a wealth of useful information printed on the back of the cards on which studio portraits were mounted. If you have a rough idea when and where the pictures were taken, you can then turn to census returns and directories to search for more information about your ancestor.