The Photo Detective

This week Maureen Taylor, The Photo Detective, is joined by Leonard Marcus, a leading writer about children’s books and the people who create them. The two discuss Leonard’s book Mr. Lincoln Sits for his Portrait and how Abraham Lincoln not only had a huge influence on the world of portraits – but how he may be responsible for some of the most famous photos today – all for believing in the technology behind a new device – the camera.

Related Episodes:

Episode 166: Picturing Frederick Douglass

Episode 167: Victorian Photo Studio Secrets

Links:

• Leonard Marcus
• Sign up for my newsletter.
• Watch my YouTube Channel.
• Like the Photo Detective Facebook Page to get notified of my Facebook Live videos.
• Need help organizing your photos? Check out the Essential Photo Organizing Video Course.
• Need help identifying family photos? Check out the Identifying Family Photographs Online Course.
• Have a photo you need help identifying? Sign up for photo consultation.

About My Guest:

Leonard Marcus is the author of more than 25 award-winning books including Margaret Wise Brown: Awakened by the Moon; Dear Genius: The Letters of Ursula Nordstrom; You Can’t Say That!; and most recently Mr. Lincoln Sits for His Portrait. Leonard is a founding trustee of the Eric Carle Museum and was the curator of the NY Public Library’s landmark exhibition “The ABC of It: Why Children’s Books Matter.” He lives in Brooklyn and speaks about his work to audiences across the world

About Maureen Taylor:

Maureen Taylor, The Photo Detective helps clients with photo-related genealogical problems. Her pioneering work in historic photo research has earned her the title “the nation’s foremost historical photo detective” by The Wall Street Journal and appearances on The View, The Today Show, Pawn Stars, and others.   Learn more at Maureentaylor.com

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a review on Apple Podcasts

I'm thrilled to be offering something new. Photo investigations. These collaborative one-on-one sessions. Look at your family photos then you and I meet to discuss your mystery images. And find out how each clue and hint might contribute to your family history. Find out more by going to maureentaylor.com and clicking on family photo investigations. 

Support the show

This week Maureen Taylor, The Photo Detective, is joined by Certified Professional Organizer and owner of HeartWork Organizing, Darla DeMorrow. The two discuss how to organize a photo collection, and what it means to do so. They look at the work of a professional organizer, and how digital and tangible photos can be approached in organizing – as well as what Darla does professionally within the world of organizing.

Related Episodes:

Episode 179: How to Organize Photos Before Scanning with Nancy Desmond of MemoryWeb.me

Episode 164: Taking Care of Your Home Movies with Becca Bender

Links:

• Sign up for my newsletter.
• Watch my YouTube Channel.
• Like the Photo Detective Facebook Page so you get notified of my Facebook Live videos.
• Need help organizing your photos? Check out the Essential Photo Organizing Video Course.
• Need help identifying family photos? Check out the Identifying Family Photographs Online Course.
• Have a photo you need help identifying? Sign up for photo consultation.

About My Guest:

Darla DeMorrow is a Certified Professional Organizer® and owner of HeartWork Organizing since 2004. Based near Philadelphia, PA, she is mom of 2, international speaker, and author of the best-selling book series SORT and Succeed, which outlines five simple steps to help you organize stuff, time, paperwork, money, and photos. The Upbeat, Organized Home Office is the third book in the series bridging the productivity gap between the home office, home life, and the company office.

Darla has been tapped for insight by such media as NPR, Forbes, HufPo Business, NBC, GMA, Realtor.com, and the Philadelphia Inquirer, among many others.

About Maureen Taylor:

Maureen Taylor, The Photo Detective helps clients with photo related genealogical problems. Her pioneering work in historic photo research has earned her the title “the nation’s foremost historical photo detective” by The Wall Street Journal and appearances on The View, The Today Show, Pawn Stars, and others. Learn more at Maureentaylor.com

I'm thrilled to be offering something new. Photo investigations. These collaborative one-on-one sessions. Look at your family photos then you and I meet to discuss your mystery images. And find out how each clue and hint might contribute to your family history. Find out more by going to maureentaylor.com and clicking on family photo investigations. 

Support the show

This week Maureen Taylor, The Photo Detective, is joined by Jeff Looman, a software developer who is the Vice President of Engineering at FileShadow, Inc. FileShadow is a software platform that categorizes your files based on metadata and content. It’s a secure vault for all of your files. The two discuss how saving our images and documents, collaboration with family and friends, and preserving our digital footprint are critical components to preservation. 

Related Episodes:

Episode 134: Unlocking the Shoebox : Digitize, Identify and Organize Family Photos

Episode 95: How to Save Your Family Archive with Permanent.org

Links:

• FileShadow
• Sign up for my newsletter.
• Watch my YouTube Channel.
• Like the Photo Detective Facebook Page so you get notified of my Facebook Live videos.
• Need help organizing your photos? Check out the Essential Photo Organizing Video Course.
• Need help identifying family photos? Check out the Identifying Family Photographs Online Course.
• Have a photo you need help identifying? Sign up for photo consultation.

About My Guest:

Jeff Looman has been working in software development for over 38 years, both as an engineer, in engineering management, product management, and product placement strategies. He is currently the Vice President of Engineering at FileShadow, Inc. and has worked for a variety of large companies such as WordPerfect, Novell, Apple Computer, and Corel and small companies such as AccessData, eDepoze, and FileShadow. He has been involved in the production of numerous software packages predominantly focused on business productivity in a collaborative environment, focusing on the needs of individual entrepreneurs, corporate executives, and everything in between.

About Maureen Taylor:
Maureen Taylor, The Photo Detective helps clients with photo related genealogical problems. Her pioneering work in historic photo research has earned her the title “the nation’s foremost historical photo detective” by The Wall Street Journal and appearances on The View, The Today Show, Pawn Stars, and others.  Learn more at Maureentaylor.com

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a review on Apple Podcasts

I'm thrilled to be offering something new. Photo investigations. These collaborative one-on-one sessions. Look at your family photos then you and I meet to discuss your mystery images. And find out how each clue and hint might contribute to your family history. Find out more by going to maureentaylor.com and clicking on family photo investigations. 

Support the show

This week Maureen Taylor, The Photo Detective, is joined by Kenyatta D. Berry, author of The Family History Toolkit, and host of PBS’ Genealogy Roadshow.

The two discuss professional genealogy, and how stories that have been forgotten in history are often the ones that can teach us the most. They also delve into what it means to have your family history, and why you should share it. 

Related Episodes:

Episode 190: Writing Genealogical Crime Mysteries with Nathan Dylan Goodwin

Episode 176: Ancestor Trouble with Author Maud Newton

Links:

• Kenyatta D. Berry
• Sign up for my newsletter.
• Watch my YouTube Channel.
• Like the Photo Detective Facebook Page so you get notified of my Facebook Live videos.
• Need help organizing your photos? Check out the Essential Photo Organizing Video Course.
• Need help identifying family photos? Check out the Identifying Family Photographs Online Course.
• Have a photo you need help identifying? Sign up for photo consultation.

About My Guest:

Kenyatta D. Berry is the author of The Family Tree Toolkit and a Contributor to the groundbreaking “1619 Project” published by The New York Times. She was the 2019 Honorary Chair for Preservation Week and was named a “Newsmaker” in American Libraries magazine a publication of the American Library Association. Kenyatta is an author, attorney, lecturer, professional genealogist, and television personality. She ignites the genealogy world with a bigger-than-life personality and an illustrious career spanning over 20 years.

About Maureen Taylor:

Maureen is a frequent keynote speaker on photo identification, photograph preservation, and family history at historical and genealogical societies, museums, conferences, libraries, and other organizations across the U.S., London, and Canada.  She’s the author of several books and hundreds of articles and her television appearances include The View and The Today Show (where she researched and presented a complete family tree for host Meredith Vieira).  She’s been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Better Homes and Gardens, The Boston Globe, Martha Stewart Living, Germany’s top newspaper Der Spiegel, American Spirit, and The New York Times. Maureen was recently a spokesperson and photograph expert for MyHeritage.com, an internationally known family history website, and also writes guidebooks, scholarly articles, and online columns for such media as Smithsonian.com. Learn more at Maureentaylor.com

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a review on Apple Podcasts

I'm thrilled to be offering something new. Photo investigations. These collaborative one-on-one sessions. Look at your family photos then you and I meet to discuss your mystery images. And find out how each clue and hint might contribute to your family history. Find out more by going to maureentaylor.com and clicking on family photo investigations. 

Support the show

This week Maureen Taylor, The Photo Detective, is joined by John Wood Sweet, a professor of history at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, and author.

The two discuss his book The Sewing Girls Tale: A Story of Crime and Consequences in Revolutionary America and how narrative nonfiction helps us, the reader, get a glimpse into the past in ways we may have never thought were possible.

Related Episodes:
Episode 191: Mathew Pearl on Narrative Non-Fiction and The Taking of Jemima Boone

Episode 166: Picturing Frederick Douglass

Links:

• John Wood Sweet
• Sign up for my newsletter.
• Watch my YouTube Channel.
• Like the Photo Detective Facebook Page so you get notified of my Facebook Live videos.
• Need help organizing your photos? Check out the Essential Photo Organizing Video Course.
• Need help identifying family photos? Check out the Identifying Family Photographs Online Course.
• Have a photo you need help identifying? Sign up for photo consultation.

About My Guest:

John Wood Sweet is a professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and former director of UNC’s Program in Sexuality Studies. He graduated from Amherst College (summa cum laude) and earned his Ph.D. in History at Princeton University. His first book, Bodies Politic: Negotiating Race in the American North, was a finalist for the Frederick Douglass Prize. He has served as a Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians, and his work has been supported by fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Mellon Foundation, the National Humanities Center, the Institute for Arts and Humanities at UNC, the Gilder Lehrman Center at Yale, the McNeil Center at Penn, and the Center for Global Studies in Culture, Power, and History at Johns Hopkins. 

About Maureen Taylor:

Maureen is a frequent keynote speaker on photo identification, photograph preservation, and family history at historical and genealogical societies, museums, conferences, libraries, and other organizations across the U.S., London, and Canada.  She’s the author of several books and hundreds of articles and her television appearances include The View and The Today Show (where she researched and presented a complete family tree for host Meredith Vieira).  She’s been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Better Homes and Gardens, The Boston Globe, Martha Stewart Living, Germany’s top newspaper Der Spiegel, American Spirit, and The New York Times. Maureen was recently a spokesperson and photograph expert for MyHeritage.com, an internationally known family history website, and also writes guidebooks, scholarly articles, and online columns for such media as Smithsonian.com. Learn more at Maureentaylor.com

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a review on Apple Podcasts.

I'm thrilled to be offering something new. Photo investigations. These collaborative one-on-one sessions. Look at your family photos then you and I meet to discuss your mystery images. And find out how each clue and hint might contribute to your family history. Find out more by going to maureentaylor.com and clicking on family photo investigations. 

Support the show

This week Maureen Taylor, The Photo Detective, is joined by Dr. Nathaniel Taylor, the Editor and Publisher of The American Genealogist. As a former medieval and modern history professor, Dr. Taylor’s genealogical research spans from medieval Spain all the way to colonial New England and Virginia. Through this, Dr. Taylor has become an expert in heraldry.

The two discuss what heraldry means, how to learn about its customs and traditions, and how Dr. Taylor’s knowledge of heraldry has helped him in his genealogy work. 

Related Episodes:

Episode 185: Genealogy on TikTok with Gwyneth.Stories.

Episode 187: Building a Story with the Ancestry.com App

Links:

• Sign up for my newsletter.
• Watch my YouTube Channel.
• Like the Photo Detective Facebook Page so you get notified of my Facebook Live videos.
• Need help organizing your photos? Check out the Essential Photo Organizing Video Course.
• Need help identifying family photos? Check out the Identifying Family Photographs Online Course.
• Have a photo you need help identifying? Sign up for photo consultation.

About My Guest:

Dr. Nathaniel Taylor, FASG, is the Editor and Publisher of The American Genealogist. He taught medieval and modern history at the university level for fifteen years. His genealogical research spans from medieval Spain, France, and Britain to colonial New England and Virginia. He has been a volunteer on the Committee on Heraldry of the New England Historic Genealogical Society since 2006 and has been its Registrar since 2019. He was elected a Fellow of the American Society of Genealogists in 2011. He lives in Barrington, Rhode Island, where he has been active in local historical organizations.

About Maureen Taylor:

Maureen is a frequent keynote speaker on photo identification, photograph preservation, and family history at historical and genealogical societies, museums, conferences, libraries, and other organizations across the U.S., London and Canada.  She’s the author of several books and hundreds of articles and her television appearances include The View and The Today Show (where she researched and presented a complete family tree for host Meredith Vieira).  She’s been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Better Homes and Gardens, The Boston Globe, Martha Stewart Living, Germany’s top newspaper Der Spiegel, American Spirit, and The New York Times. Maureen was recently a spokesperson and photograph expert for MyHeritage.com, an internationally known family history website and also writes guidebooks, scholarly articles and online columns for such media as Smithsonian.com. Learn more at Maureentaylor.com

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a review on Apple Podcasts.

I'm thrilled to be offering something new. Photo investigations. These collaborative one-on-one sessions. Look at your family photos then you and I meet to discuss your mystery images. And find out how each clue and hint might contribute to your family history. Find out more by going to maureentaylor.com and clicking on family photo investigations. 

Support the show

This week Maureen Taylor, The Photo Detective, is joined by Bill Becker, who is the curator of  The American Museum of Photography, as well as an award-winning author, and Emmy-award winner for his writing and production work. 

The two discuss the importance of imagery, storytelling, and preservation through images.

Related Episodes:

Episode 173: Cabinet Cards of Broadway and Silver Screen Stars

Episode 167: Victorian Photo Studio Secrets

Links:

• American Museum of Photography
• The Daguerreian Society
• Sign up for my newsletter.
• Watch my YouTube Channel.
• Like the Photo Detective Facebook Page so you get notified of my Facebook Live videos.
• Need help organizing your photos? Check out the Essential Photo Organizing Video Course.
• Need help identifying family photos? Check out the Identifying Family Photographs Online Course.
• Have a photo you need help identifying? Sign up for photo consultation.

About My Guest:
Wm. B. Becker tackled the job of establishing The American Museum of Photography™. A noted historian of photography whose research has been published in American Heritage, History of Photography: An International Quarterly, and other forums, Bill Becker is also a television producer and writer whose work has been honored with four EMMY® awards. He is the author of Brady of Broadway, a one-man play about the photographer Mathew Brady that’s been performed at the Smithsonian Institution and other venues.

The American Museum of Photography™ is “A Museum Without Walls…for an Art Without Boundaries.” Its predecessor, Photography’s Beginnings: A Visual History, made its debut on the World Wide Web on May 25, 1996.

About The Museum

The American Museum of Photography is an award-winning Virtual Museum dedicated to educating, informing, and sharing great photographs with millions of visitors world-wide. The Collection includes five thousand individual images, from the earliest daguerreotype portraits to the work of Ansel Adams. 

About Maureen Taylor:
Maureen is a frequent keynote speaker on photo identification, photograph preservation, and family history at historical and genealogical societies, museums, conferences, libraries, and other organizations across the U.S., London, and Canada.   She’s been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Better Homes and Gardens, The Boston Globe, Martha Stewart Living, Germany’s top newspaper Der Spiegel, American Spirit, and The New York Times. Learn more at Maureentaylor.com

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a review on Apple Podcasts

I'm thrilled to be offering something new. Photo investigations. These collaborative one-on-one sessions. Look at your family photos then you and I meet to discuss your mystery images. And find out how each clue and hint might contribute to your family history. Find out more by going to maureentaylor.com and clicking on family photo investigations. 

Support the show

This week Maureen Taylor, The Photo Detective, is joined by Sarah Weatherwax, Senior Curator of Graphic Arts at the Library Company of Philadelphia. Sarah has worked at the Library Company for nearly thirty years. From political cartoons to incredible daguerrotypes, these images are preserved for generations to come at the Library. In addition, the two discuss visual literacy and how this can be key for working with any type of image.

Related Episodes:

Episode 182: The Archive Lady, Melissa Barker

Episode 165: Reading the Clues in World War I Images

Links:

• Imperfect History
• Sign up for my newsletter.
• Watch my YouTube Channel.
• Like the Photo Detective Facebook Page so you get notified of my Facebook Live videos.
• Need help organizing your photos? Check out the Essential Photo Organizing Video Course.
• Need help identifying family photos? Check out the Identifying Family Photographs Online Course.
• Have a photo you need help identifying? Sign up for photo consultation.

About My Guest:

Sarah Weatherwax has worked at the Library Company of Philadelphia since 1993 and has been the Senior Curator of Graphic Arts since 2020. She has written articles about photography for the Daguerreian Annual and Pennsylvania History and has co-authored a book about 19th-century photographic views of Center City Philadelphia from the Library’s collections. She has curated exhibitions on diverse topics including Philadelphia daguerreotypes; the work of William Rau, the Pennsylvania Railroad’s official photographer; and most recently, Imperfect History: Curating the Graphic Arts Collection at Benjamin Franklin’s Public Library, a commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Graphic Arts Department at the Library Company. Her research interests include women in photography and Philadelphia’s built environment. She currently serves on the board of the Daguerreian Society and is Assistant Editor of the Daguerreian Annual. 

About Maureen Taylor:

Maureen is a frequent keynote speaker on photo identification, photograph preservation, and family history at historical and genealogical societies, museums, conferences, libraries, and other organizations across the U.S., London, and Canada.  She’s the author of several books and hundreds of articles and her television appearances include The View and The Today Show .  She’s been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Better Homes and Gardens, The Boston Globe, Martha Stewart Living, Germany’s top newspaper Der Spiegel, American Spirit, and The New York Times.  Learn more at Maureentaylor.com

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a review on Apple Podcasts

I'm thrilled to be offering something new. Photo investigations. These collaborative one-on-one sessions. Look at your family photos then you and I meet to discuss your mystery images. And find out how each clue and hint might contribute to your family history. Find out more by going to maureentaylor.com and clicking on family photo investigations. 

Support the show

This week, Maureen Taylor, The Photo Detective, is joined by New York Times bestselling author Katherine Howe. Katherine and Maureen discuss how history and major events in our past have inspired Katherine’s work. To her surprise, her genealogy yielded an unexpected connection to some of her characters

Related Episodes:

Episode 190: Writing Genealogical Crime Mysteries with Nathan Dylan Goodwin

Episode 189: Mathew Pearl on Narrative Non-Fiction and the Taking of Jemima Boone

Links:

• Katherine Howe
• Sign up for my newsletter.
• Watch my YouTube Channel.
• Like the Photo Detective Facebook Page so you get notified of my Facebook Live videos.
• Need help organizing your photos? Check out the Essential Photo Organizing Video Course.
• Need help identifying family photos? Check out the Identifying Family Photographs Online Course.
• Have a photo you need help identifying? Sign up for photo consultation.

About My Guest:

Katherine Howe is a New York Times bestselling and award-winning writer of historical fiction. Her adult novels are The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane, which debuted at #2 on the New York Times bestseller list in 2009, and The House of Velvet and Glass, ( USA Today bestseller in 2011). For young adults, Katherine has written Conversion, ( 2015 Massachusetts Book Award in young adult literature), and a New York City-based literary ghost story called The Appearance of Annie van Sinderen,  (2016 “Must Read” for young adults by the Massachusetts Center for the Book). In 2014 she edited The Penguin Book of Witches for Penguin Classics, a primary source reader on the history of witchcraft in England and North America. The Daughters of Temperance Hobbs, ( Henry Holt and Co  2019). She co-wrote Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty with Anderson Cooper.  She has appeared on “Good Morning America,” “CBS This Morning,” NPR’s “Weekend Edition,” the BBC, and the History Channel, and she hosted “Salem: Unmasking the Devil” for National Geographic. 

About Maureen Taylor:

Maureen is a frequent keynote speaker on photo identification, photograph preservation, and family history at historical and genealogical societies, museums, conferences, libraries, and other organizations across the U.S., London and Canada.  She’s the author of several books and hundreds of articles and her television appearances include The View and The Today Show.  She’s been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Better Homes and Gardens, The Boston Globe, Martha Stewart Living, Germany’s top newspaper Der Spiegel, American Spirit, and The New York Times.  Learn more at Maureentaylor.com

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a review on Apple Podcasts.

I'm thrilled to be offering something new. Photo investigations. These collaborative one-on-one sessions. Look at your family photos then you and I meet to discuss your mystery images. And find out how each clue and hint might contribute to your family history. Find out more by going to maureentaylor.com and clicking on family photo investigations. 

Support the show

This week Maureen Taylor, The Photo Detective, is joined by Dr. Aaron Greenburg, who is the co-founder of Biography, a platform that reinvents the way we tell stories. The two discuss the art of storytelling, how to share those stories, and how Biograph can help. 

Related Episodes:

Episode 187: Building a Story with the Ancestry.com App

Episode 98: Collect Photo Stories with StoryGlory

Links:

• Biograph
• Sign up for my newsletter.
• Watch my YouTube Channel.
• Like the Photo Detective Facebook Page so you get notified of my Facebook Live videos.
• Need help organizing your photos? Check out the Essential Photo Organizing Video Course.
• Need help identifying family photos? Check out the Identifying Family Photographs Online Course.
• Have a photo you need help identifying? Sign up for photo consultation.

About My Guest:

Dr. Aaron Greenberg co-founded Biograph, a storytelling technology company that has published dozens of books for families and entrepreneurs. He has served on the Core Faculty of Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine’s Bioethics Clinical Scholars Program and is a lecturer at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

About Maureen Taylor:

Maureen is a frequent keynote speaker on photo identification, photograph preservation, and family history at historical and genealogical societies, museums, conferences, libraries, and other organizations across the U.S., London, and Canada.  She’s the author of several books and hundreds of articles and her television appearances include The View and The Today Show (where she researched and presented a complete family tree for host Meredith Vieira).  She’s been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Better Homes and Gardens, The Boston Globe, Martha Stewart Living, Germany’s top newspaper Der Spiegel, American Spirit, and The New York Times. Maureen was recently a spokesperson and photograph expert for MyHeritage.com, an internationally known family history website, and also writes guidebooks, scholarly articles, and online columns for such media as Smithsonian.com. Learn more at Maureentaylor.com

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a review on Apple Podcasts

I'm thrilled to be offering something new. Photo investigations. These collaborative one-on-one sessions. Look at your family photos then you and I meet to discuss your mystery images. And find out how each clue and hint might contribute to your family history. Find out more by going to maureentaylor.com and clicking on family photo investigations. 

Support the show