Do these faces match?

Our Valentine’s Day newsletter featured a charming German-published postcard. I attributed it to Annie Powell but when I saw the image three years ago, her authorship was not obvious. Annie kept it among her final possessions but with no helpful notes on the back, it might just as well have been a postcard she liked and saved. At that time, between 1900 to 1915, collecting postcards was a popular hobby.

I had a theory that as her photo studio business declined, she pivoted to creating images for postcards. She kept many, including custom-printed real photo postcards(RPP) made from actual photographic prints. These she would have printed herself in the darkroom.

I wondered if modern facial recognition technology could solve a century-old cold case. So I paired the Valentine’s Day models with a photo Annie took of her sister’s children after they immigrated from England in 1901. The Wood children are, from left, Lenora, Annie, Lillian and Hubert.

Sure enough, the children in the postcard are from left to right, Lillian and Annie. The FacePlusPlus facial recognition software I used awarded these matches with their highest level of probability. So in another words, yes, these are indeed excellent matches. Judging from the relative ages of the children, we can guess that the postcard was published about 1904.

Biometrics, a measure of the proportion and scale of facial features, has become and important tool in my research. But I have learned to make careful judgements about the probability of matches, especially when subjects are wearing hats or the image is of poor quality.

As an interesting side note, an internet poster company picked up the postcard at a flea market years ago, and you can buy it as a framed poster costing $488 on the high end. Of course, there is no attribution. I felt an obligation to write to them about my findings but have not had a response.

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—Bernie