#Bellingcat online toolkit archive
#Bellingcat online toolkit series

The museum also dates it from 1865 to 1875. įor example, the photo below from the Rijksmuseum album can easily be traced to Freiburg in Germany through a reverse image search. In cases where a building has not undergone significant changes, its surroundings can be used to help determine when a photo was taken. The timeframe, however, is more specific than that offered by Rijksmuseum ( 1865-1875), putting it somewhere between 18. This eventually leads to the exact same picture, though the Ulm’s City Archive’s version is of poorer quality.

#Bellingcat online toolkit archive

Now that we know the picture is from Ulm, we can search manually through Ulm’s City Archive to find images that have not been indexed by search engines. Right: Photo from the Rijksmuseum album showing structural changes to the church, circa 1860 – 1864. Left: Oldest photo of Ulm church tower in 1854. However, despite the similarities we can tell that the Rijksmusem’s photo is more modern, because the building has features that do not yet exist in the oldest photo. The photo, taken in 1854 and described as the oldest known photo of the church, is almost identical in perspective to the Rijksmuseum photo. Reverse image searches of the photo of this church facade, also seen in the view across the river which we found using Google Lens reverse image search, leads to a match with the website of Ulm’s Art Association. These photos from the Rijksmusem are already identified as albumen pictures, a method of photography popular between the 1850s and 1900s, and have a rough period assigned to them in the album.īut the content of photos can also be used to more precisely establish when they were taken. Sites including can help establish the rough time period on this basis, though this is a nuanced process best left to experts. The size of photos, as well as the chemical process by which photos were produced, change over time.

If the author is unknown and no date is written on the photo, physical features can help determine the time period. Combined with other tools, such as PeakVisor, Google Earth, and AI colourisation, it has now become easier to geolocate photos of unknown origin. Google Lens’ recognition algorithm has improved the potential of reverse image searches for finding a match for old photos. The perspectives of three album photos mapped with Google Earth Pro. To use a reverse image search, the photograph in question must be the only image in the frame. The 21 photos all appear to be original, but in many cases a reverse image search can still be used to find similar looking images that might provide more detail about location and time. Here’s how we did it - and how you could, too. These tools and methods allowed us to pinpoint the location of several of these photographs. Reverse image searches, Google Lens, digitised newspapers, heritage and auctioneering websites, AI colourisation and tools such as Peakvisor can help add valuable information and understanding to historic art collections. New tools and a wealth of online data make it easier to navigate more than 150 years of evolving landscapes, cities, buildings and street names. Today, open source research can provide new clues. However, the location and authors of 21 images remain unknown. Most of these photographs were taken by well-known photographers such as Samuel Bourne, and the duo Shepherd & Robertson. The aforementioned travel album, which can be viewed online here, contains 60 images. The Rijksmuseum has become a leader in the effort by galleries worldwide to digitise their collections. This album is one of hundreds in the possession of Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, the largest museum in the Netherlands. But in other cases, it’s still unclear where, when, and by whom these photographs were taken.

Many of these were captured by prominent photographers at well-known landmarks and sites.

#Bellingcat online toolkit series

In 1860, roughly 30 years after photography was invented, a series of photos were taken across Europe and India.