Introduction: In this article, Gena Philibert-Ortega explains how to do a reverse image search for unknown people or locations in old photos. Gena is a genealogist and author of the book “From the Family Kitchen.”

You’ve heard that familiar saying “a picture is worth a thousand words.” But too often we only take photos at face value. We may take a look at a photo, note the people pictured, and then go on to the next photo. But this is a mistake.

Family photos can tell us stories, though some of them are harder to discover – and those hidden stories require us to ask questions and seek out tools that can answer those questions. I was reminded of this when I was gifted a family photo recently that had left me with questions but no one to provide the answers.

Irma and Lois

Recently a cousin sent me a photo of two women that she knew nothing about.

As I looked at the photo I knew that the two women pictured were sisters. They were Irma and Lois (later Lois Philibert), my paternal great-aunt and grandmother. I knew both women, and having spent decades looking at photos of them I was able to quickly identify them in this photo.

As I studied the photo, I concluded that Irma and Lois appeared to be teenagers. They are at a beach and there are buildings behind them. The photo had some damage at the top and some tape at the bottom, leading me to believe that originally it was in a photo album or even a frame. No other identifying features existed except for the date (I assumed) penciled on the back: 4/14/45. That date, if correct, makes sense because it would place Irma at 16 years old and Lois at 14 years old.

OK, so now I know who is pictured and a possible date and ages of the young women pictured. Now what?

I know they lived in Southern California, and I assumed that they were sitting on a beach there – but which one? I had a few guesses but I wasn’t really sure where they were.

Looking at the buildings behind them, one building over Lois’ left shoulder is distinct. It is curved and has columns. I thought it was possible that I could do a reverse image search to find the exact location.

What Is a Reverse Image Search?

A reverse image search is a way to use a search engine for images instead of words. A Wikipedia definition of a reverse image search is:

Reverse image search is a content-based image retrieval (CBIR) query technique that involves providing the CBIR system with a sample image that it will then base its search upon; in terms of information retrieval, the sample image is very useful. In particular, reverse image search is characterized by a lack of search terms. This effectively removes the need for a user to guess at keywords or terms that may or may not return a correct result. Reverse image search also allows users to discover content that is related to a specific sample image.*

So basically, to do a reverse image search you are uploading a photo and searching based on the photo instead of keywords. I did try first to search by keywords, trying to guess what a positive result might look like, but I wasn’t able to find anything that matched. I really was just guessing at what to search for.

I decided that I needed to do a reverse image search and hope that I had enough to get a result. I went to Google Images and used the camera icon.

By clicking on the camera icon, I was able to upload the digitized photo from my computer and search on it.

As you can see, when I uploaded the photo, Google Images gave me a special tool: a small, highlight square which was perfect for focusing on that building and not the girls.

While I could do a reverse image search on the entire photo to see if anyone else has uploaded this photo to a website, that wasn’t really what I wanted to find – I wanted to pinpoint the location. However, you may have times when you want to search a photo by the people pictured instead of a different feature of the photo.

I have tried this search on the building a few times. Like most of the searching we do in genealogy, a reverse image search takes patience and perseverance. For example, one of the initial returns for this search was for a building in Singapore.

The top red arrow shows the description for the historic Capitol Theatre in Singapore. I knew that wasn’t the right location for Irma and Lois’ beach, but tucked in the “Visual matches” section of the search results was a building located in Long Beach, California (indicated by the bottom red arrow).

That was it: it was the Long Beach Bath House! (Boy, I was so excited.)

Google Image search showed me other places on the Internet with an image of the Bath House. This included archival collections and eBay.

As I looked at those images I knew I had found the exact location. Reading more about the Long Beach Bath House, I learned it was part of an amusement center and that tourists posed in front of it.

Mission Accomplished

Now you may be thinking: who cares? But as I add that information and history to my narrative about this photo, I get a sense of what they had access to, and what that day at the beach looked like for them. Even better, although this structure and the accompanying park no longer exist, its present-day location is one I’ve been to with my own family on trips to the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach.

Two ancestors that my children didn’t know can now be placed in context as my children look at a photo of a place where they have been. Their interest in that photo has gone from “an old photo” to their great-grandmother in a familiar location. (“That’s cool!” was a response I got. Yay for genealogy!)

Now that photo has a better chance of being treasured long after I am gone than it had prior to my research.

Find Those Thousand Words

Not all family photos will benefit from a reverse image search. Portraits done in studios, for example, won’t yield more information from a search. But photos of locations or family members in front of places can be enhanced by learning more about the places that are pictured.

Have you used a reverse image search? What have you learned? I’d love to hear about your discoveries.

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Note on the header image: a close-up of the beach photo of Irma and Lois. Credit: from Gena Philibert-Ortega’s collection.

* “Reverse Image Search,” Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_image_search).
Special thanks to my aunt and cousin who made me aware of this photo and gifted it to me.