This week on The Photo Detective podcast, Maureen Taylor, the Photo Detective, is joined by Trevor Mattea.

Trevor shares how finding a photo in his home’s attic helped inspire him to find who that photo belonged to – meaning the descendants of the people in the photo. 

This episode looks at the intimate journey that can come from these so-called “orphan photos” and what a reunion looks like. In fact, Trevor actually reached out to Maureen for advice on what to do with the photo and the two recount those steps and how to approach one of these ownerless photos to help find a descendant. 

With so many orphan photos, this podcast episode offers advice on how to go about trying to reunite a photo with its owners. 

Related Episodes:

Bonus Episode: Lost History Discovered (in the Recycling) 

Episode 137: The Walls Can Talk: Finding History in a Hidden Room with David Whitcomb 

Links:

• Sign up for my newsletter.
• Watch my YouTube Channel.
• Like the Photo Detective Facebook Page so you get notified of my Facebook Live videos.
• Need help organizing your photos? Check out the Essential Photo Organizing Video Course.
• Need help identifying family photos? Check out the Identifying Family Photographs Online Course.
• Have a photo you need help identifying? Sign up for photo consultation.

About My Guest:

Trevor Mattea has a range of professional experiences and interests grounded in conversation, knowledge-building, and creative expression. As an at-home parent to a young son, he focuses on genealogy, family traditions, homeschooling, and home renovation. He creates personalized gifts and party games through his Etsy store, BingoMe.

Previously, Trevor taught elementary school and consulted throughout the country in the areas of deeper learning, digital portfolios, project-based learning, parent engagement, and technology integration. He also hosted the New Books in Education podcast.

He holds an M.A. in Education from Stanford University and an A.B. in Political Science from Washington University.

About Maureen Taylor:

Maureen Taylor, The Photo Detective^Òhelps clients with photo-related genealogical problems. Her pioneering work in historic photo research has earned her the title “the nation’s foremost historical photo detective” by The Wall Street Journal and appearances on The View, The Today Show, Pawn Stars, and others.   Learn more at Maureentaylor.com

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a review on Apple Podcasts.

The post Episode 206: Found in an Attic, Returned to Family appeared first on Maureen Taylor.

This week on the Photo Detective Podcast, Maureen Taylor, The Photo Detective, is joined by Daniel Patt. Daniel is a software engineer at Google, as well as the grandson of three holocaust survivors. 

It’s this familial relation that inspired Daniel, in his spare time, to create an artificial intelligence platform called “From Numbers to Names” that aids those descended from individuals who faced the Holocaust to discover connections and photos of their loved ones. The project also aims to help identify the millions of unidentified faces in the Holocaust photo and video archives. 

Maureen and Daniel discuss his project, how a trip to Poland six years ago served as the inspiration to create this project, and how his background has helped him develop AI. 

It’s a project that all listeners should hear about, whether they are descendants of those who were in the Holocaust or not. 

Related Episodes:

Episode 187 : Building a Story with the Ancestry.com App

Episode 153: Ellis Island Immigrant Photos Identified with Louis Takács

Links:

• Numbers to Names
• Sign up for my newsletter.
• Watch my YouTube Channel.
• Like the Photo Detective Facebook Page so you get notified of my Facebook Live videos.
• Need help organizing your photos? Check out the Essential Photo Organizing Video Course.
• Need help identifying family photos? Check out the Identifying Family Photographs Online Course.
• Have a photo you need help identifying? Sign up for photo consultation.

About My Guest:

Daniel Patt is a software engineer at Google, and is the grandson of three holocaust survivors. In his spare time, he created an artificial intelligence platform called From Numbers to Names to help Holocaust descendants discover photos of their loved ones – and help identify the millions of unidentified faces in Holocaust photo and video archives.

About Maureen Taylor:

Maureen Taylor, The Photo Detective^Òhelps clients with photo related genealogical problems. Her pioneering work in historic photo research has earned her the title “the nation’s foremost historical photo detective” by The Wall Street Journal and appearances on The View, The Today Show, Pawn Stars, and others.   Learn more at Maureentaylor.com

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a review on Apple Podcasts.

The post Episode 205: Numbers to Names: A Holocaust Photo Database appeared first on Maureen Taylor.

This week, Maureen Taylor, The Photo Detective, is joined by Tom Butler, an artist whose work may be controversial to some listeners. Tom uses unidentified cabinet cards to create art, often altering the original image to enhance them, which begs the question if he is destroying the image, or creating something even better than before.

Related Episodes:

Bonus Episode: Stitching on Pictures with Stitchography by Emma

Episode 153: Ellis Island Immigrant Photo Identified

Links:

• Tom Butler Studio
• Sign up for my newsletter.
• Watch my YouTube Channel.
• Like the Photo Detective Facebook Page so you get notified of my Facebook Live videos.
• Need help organizing your photos? Check out the Essential Photo Organizing Video Course.
• Need help identifying family photos? Check out the Identifying Family Photographs Online Course.
• Have a photo you need help identifying? Sign up for photo consultation.

About My Guest:

For the last twelve years artist, Tom Butler has been appropriating anonymous Victorian cabinet cards with incorporated personal symbols such as hair, masks, flowers, and geometric abstractions, painted on the surface with gouache. In the process, he attempts to reveal the imagined personalities of the sitters while in the knowledge that he is cloaking them with parts of himself. He also makes self-portraits and uses cabinet cards and found photographs to create collages, sculptures, and rubbings to express both a love of the medium and a critique of photography as a whole.

Butler was born in London, England and now lives in Portland ME, USA. He studied at Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton, Chelsea College of Art, UAL, and the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL. He exhibits internationally and his work can be found in collections such as The British Museum and Soho House.

About Maureen Taylor:

Maureen is a frequent keynote speaker on photo identification, photograph preservation, and family history at historical and genealogical societies, museums, conferences, libraries, and other organizations across the U.S., London, and Canada.  She’s the author of several books and hundreds of articles and her television appearances include The View and The Today Show (where she researched and presented a complete family tree for host Meredith Vieira).  She’s been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Better Homes and Gardens, The Boston Globe, Martha Stewart Living, Germany’s top newspaper Der Spiegel, American Spirit, and The New York Times. Maureen was recently a spokesperson and photograph expert for MyHeritage.com, an internationally known family history website, and also writes guidebooks, scholarly articles, and online columns for such media as Smithsonian.com. Learn more at Maureentaylor.com

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a review on Apple Podcasts.

The post Episode 175: Cabinet Card Photos Transformed Into Art with Tom Butler appeared first on Maureen Taylor.

This Week, Maureen Taylor, The Photo Detective, is joined by Greg Kozlick, who helped reunite a woman with long-lost wedding photos – in the story of a photo reunion that’s sure to tug on the heartstrings. 

Related Episodes:

Episode 32: The Man Behind Dead Fred

Bonus: Lost history Discovered in the Recycling with Paul Moar

Links:

• Returning the Slides
• Sign up for my newsletter.
• Watch my YouTube Channel.
• Like the Photo Detective Facebook Page so you get notified of my Facebook Live videos.
• Need help organizing your photos? Check out the Essential Photo Organizing Video Course.
• Need help identifying family photos? Check out the Identifying Family Photographs Online Course.
• Have a photo you need help identifying? Sign up for photo consultation.

About My Guest:

Greg Kozlick has a deep passion for photography including portraiture, architectural images, and photo journalism. He is currently a student at Aurora University.

About Maureen Taylor:

Maureen is a frequent keynote speaker on photo identification, photograph preservation, and family history at historical and genealogical societies, museums, conferences, libraries, and other organizations across the U.S., London and Canada.  She’s the author of several books and hundreds of articles and her television appearances include The View and The Today Show (where she researched and presented a complete family tree for host Meredith Vieira).  She’s been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Better Homes and Gardens, The Boston Globe, Martha Stewart Living, Germany’s top newspaper Der Spiegel, American Spirit, and The New York Times. Maureen was recently a spokesperson and photograph expert for MyHeritage.com, an internationally known family history website and also writes guidebooks, scholarly articles and online columns for such media as Smithsonian.com. Learn more at Maureentaylor.com

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a review on Apple Podcasts.

The post Episode 174: A Case of Mistaken Identity – Sue’s Wedding Photo Reunion appeared first on Maureen Taylor.

This week Maureen Taylor, the Photo Detective, is joined by B. Wells Douglas, a professional photographer who has quite the following on the social media platform TikTok for vintage photo finds.

B. Wells looks at slides that he’s found and digs deeper into their meaning, looking at who is in the photographs, and trying to examine why they may have been taken, who is in the photos, and what story they tell. 

He also dives into what it means to be able to afford camera equipment, and how our ancestor’s socioeconomic status often influences just how many photos we have of them, and approaches the slides with an artistic lens, looking at their composition and the world of light and dark. 

Related Episodes:

Episode 165: Reading Clues in World War I Snapshots with Curator Lora Vogt

Episode 144: A Ten Year Photo Identification Journey

Links:

• Vintage Film Finds
• Sign up for my newsletter.
• Watch my YouTube Channel.
• Like the Photo Detective Facebook Page so you get notified of my Facebook Live videos.
• Need help organizing your photos? Check out the Essential Photo Organizing Video Course.
• Need help identifying family photos? Check out the Identifying Family Photographs Online Course.
• Have a photo you need help identifying? Sign up for photo consultation.

About My Guest:

B. Wells Douglas is a photographer who lives in Bloomington, IN. His work uses historical vernacular photography to construct digital spaces that explore social and political issues facing the United States.

He grew up in Montana within a family of artists and was taught from a young age the importance of approaching life creatively. In 2019, he joined the Indiana University BFA photography program. During his time there, he began exploring historical, vernacular photography. His early work with vernacular photography explored his relationship with his grandfather and his life. He began building an archive of 35mm slides and was interested in the patterns he noticed in the ways gender was represented in family photographs. For his BFA thesis project, “AMERICHROME”, Wells dove into vernacular photography and looked at the ways historical and contemporary issues are found within personal documentations of everyday life. 

An additional outcome of this work has been the development of a large social media platform with over 20,000 followers. Several followers have shared/donated images and his pages have become an intersection of a wide variety of people. 

About Maureen Taylor:

Maureen is a frequent keynote speaker on photo identification, photograph preservation, and family history at historical and genealogical societies, museums, conferences, libraries, and other organizations across the U.S., London, and Canada.  She’s the author of several books and hundreds of articles and her television appearances include The View and The Today Show (where she researched and presented a complete family tree for host Meredith Vieira).  She’s been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Better Homes and Gardens, The Boston Globe, Martha Stewart Living, Germany’s top newspaper Der Spiegel, American Spirit, and The New York Times. Maureen was recently a spokesperson and photograph expert for MyHeritage.com, an internationally known family history website, and also writes guidebooks, scholarly articles, and online columns for such media as Smithsonian.com. Learn more at Maureentaylor.com

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a review on Apple Podcasts.

The post Episode 172: Vintage Film Finds with B. Wells Douglas appeared first on Maureen Taylor.