Your questions answered

Comparing likenesses across time

Q Please could you confirm whether the lady wearing a skirt and blouse in the single portrait could be the same person as the elderly lady sitting next to the groom in the wedding scene. The single lady is my grandmother, Margaret Fenn (née Kuliczkowski), the daughter of a Polish army officer who, like many others, fought alongside the dissidents during the 1830 Warsaw Revolution. Unfortunately they were defeated, many escaping to France and then the UK.

Joe Fenn

A Thank you for sharing a little of your interesting family history! It would be useful to have been advised of your grandmother’s birth and death dates (if you know them) – just to be certain that your identification fits the photos provided, and to be able to respond to your query fully-informed.

Photo 1

Either way, effective comparisons between photographs do require determining an accurate date for each, and going by the visual images alone the single studio portrait dates to the early-mid 1910s. Key dating clues include the lady’s striped satin blouse with small collar, worn over a round-necked under-blouse, and her slender dark tailored skirt featuring large buttons: this was a common skirt style during the narrow ‘hobble’ skirt’ era, chiefly 1911-1914, but we should extend the date a little to c.1911-1916. Your grandmother appears to be middle-aged here and was probably photographed to commemorate a landmark birthday.

Photo 2

Judging from the fashionable dress on display, especially the ladies’ loose frocks and tops with low rounded necklines or jackets/coats with wide collars – and also the bridesmaids’ distinctive net caps – this undated outdoor wedding scene dates to soon after the First World War, c.1920-1923 or thereabouts. Was your grandmother, Margaret, definitely still alive in the early-1920s? Assuming that she was, can she be the lady in helmet-like early cloche-style hat and broad-collared coat in this group photograph taken broadly between four and twelve years later than the single photograph?

Photo 2

People often look quite different in different kinds of photographs, and it can be especially difficult to spot resemblance when comparing such images: a superior studio portrait depicting fine, close-up facial details and a serious expression, compared with a small face among many, the subject smiling naturally, her head partly obscured by formal