Start with the box under the bed

Almost every family has one: a biscuit tin, a shoebox, a bulging carrier bag of photographs that has moved house more times than anyone can remember. Before you think about albums, frames or archives, your first job is to gather everything into one place and find out what you are actually dealing with. This is the least glamorous stage of building a personal history, and it is also the one that makes everything else possible.

Look in more places than you think. Photographs hide in lofts, garages, bedside drawers, coat pockets, the back of wardrobes and the pages of old books. Ring round your relatives and ask what they are holding, too — a cousin may have the only pictures of your grandmother as a young woman. Collect albums, loose prints, slides, negatives, framed pictures and those strange little wallet-sized portraits from the 1970s. Keep an eye out for anything written on the back, even if it is only “Blackpool, 1961”.

Sort in three passes: decade, person, place

Trying to sort a lifetime of photographs in one sitting is the fastest way to abandon the project. Work in passes instead, and let each pass get a little more detailed than the last. A dining table, a few clean tea towels and a stack of labelled envelopes are all the equipment you need.

• Decade first. Spread everything out and make rough piles by era. You can usually spot the 1970s by the colour cast alone, and the 1990s by the date printed in the corner. If you cannot tell, put it in a “date unknown” pile rather than guessing.
• Person second. Within each decade, group pictures of the same people together. Give every recurring face a pile, even if you do not yet know who they are. “Tall man in uniform” is a perfectly good working label for now.
• Place third. Group by house, street, town or landmark. Places often jog memories that faces cannot, so this pass frequently solves the mysteries left over from the second.

As you go, keep a notebook or a simple spreadsheet with your working labels. Note which photographs have writing on the back and which are blank, because the blank ones are the ones you will need to chase.

Label the backs while memories are still with you

This is the single most valuable thing you will do. An unlabelled photograph is a picture; a labelled one is evidence. Write on the back, along the bottom edge, in a soft pencil — an HB or 2B is ideal. Pencil does not bleed through, does not fade as ink can, and can be gently erased if you later discover you were wrong.

Never use biro, marker pen or sticky labels. Ink can transfer to other photographs over time, and adhesive labels fall off, taking the surface of the print with them. Never write on the front, and never use tape.

Record more than a name. Aim for full names including maiden names, an approximate date, the place, the occasion and one line that only your family would know. Something like:

• Who: Eileen Marsh (née Doyle), with her sister Jean
• When: Whit Sunday, about 1953
• Where: Back yard of 14 Corporation Street, Salford
• Story: The day before Eileen left home to train as a nurse in Leeds

If you are unsure, write your best guess with a question mark beside it. An honest “possibly 1947?” is far more useful to a future reader than a confident error, and far better than silence.

Scan for safekeeping — and for sharing

Once the photographs are labelled, digitise them. A flatbed scanner gives the best results; a phone camera on a plain background in even, indirect daylight is a reasonable fallback. Scan prints at 600 dpi if they are smaller than about 13 by 18 centimetres, and 300 dpi for anything larger. Save a master copy as a high-quality TIFF, then make JPEG versions for sharing.

Name your files so they make sense without a caption. A format such as Marsh_Eileen_1953_Salford_Whit will still be understandable in thirty years. Keep one copy on an external hard drive and one in a cloud account, and check that both still open at least once a year. If a photograph has writing on the back, scan the reverse too and pair the two files together.

Gather the stories, not just the captions

Photographs are prompts, and the best material comes from talking. Sit down with an older relative, put a small pile of prints in front of them and ask open questions: “What was happening just after this was taken?” “Who else was there?” “What happened to that house?” Record the conversation if they are happy for you to, and transcribe the parts that matter.

Ask about the ordinary things — what they ate, what the street smelled like, how much a ticket cost — because those details are what bring a personal history to life. Write up your notes the same day, while the voices are still in your head.

Shape the collection into something readable

With photographs sorted, labelled, scanned and annotated, you have the raw material for a real personal history. Arrange the images by decade, write two or three sentences of introduction for each period, and let the labelled backs supply the captions. A simple printed booklet, made at home or through a high-street print shop, will be treasured far more than a folder of files.

Keep a working copy of everything, share it with your relatives, and invite corrections. Family history is a living thing, and someone will always remember one more name.