Old photographs borrow explanations from whoever happens to be holding them.

An image with its context gone takes on whatever story the person holding it supplies. Two relatives will describe the same afternoon differently, both entirely confident, and the photograph will not correct either of them because it has no opinion. What looks like a record is really a prompt. The meaning arrives from outside the frame every time.

Write on the backs of your pictures, plainly: who, where, roughly when. Ask the oldest person in the family to go through a box with you while that is still possible. An hour of that saves a great deal of confident invention later.