Snappy Families

In my role as my family's historian and archivist - nowhere near as glamorous as it may sound - I am attempting to deal with several boxes of photographs of, or taken by, family members. A few have scrawled notes on the back indicating when and/or where they were taken, and who they show. Largely, however, they are like most other family photographs; a smiling couple, a mother with her new baby, a wedding group, all with no indication as to who they may be. My father is 89 with an unreliable memory, and my mother died last year - no help there.

Some are easy, such as my father's parents' wedding picture. I recognise Grandma's father Arthur from other photographs, and because I have their marriage certificate, I know that the best man is Grandpa's brother, also an Arthur. Grandma's sisters share her family looks, and the boy in the background is probably her brother Charles. This next one, though; there's Grandpa again, but whose wedding is it? Who are all these other people?

Face recognition software has been in use for a while, not least by national security services. Using certain datum points on a subject's face, it checks for matching proportions on other faces in its database, and can allow for ageing. I would like it to also make suggestions on the basis of different but similar facial characteristics, using a database of family relationships (which I already have), and proximity to known ancestors on other photographs in my collection. Am I asking too much?

If it tells me that this is a photo of great uncle Ernest at great aunt Winifred's wedding in 1930, I'll know it's a failure because he was killed in action in 1916.