City Faces – historical portraits in a new light
Using facial recognition, the research project City Faces has linked together around 40,000 historical portraits, bringing new life to the people behind the images. By combining advanced information technology with archival material and population records, previously unknown life stories are now emerging from the city’s history.
Anders Hast har utvecklat metoder för att identifiera personer i historiska porträtt. Foto: Privat.
In the project City Faces, face recognition was used to find historically interesting people in various photo archives.
- Within the project, approximately 40,000 images were digitalized, although we had access to a couple of hundred thousand portrait photos, says Anders Hast, Professor at Department of Information Technology; Division of Vi3; Image Analysis.
Anders Hast developed, among other things, improved methods to ensure that all images of a specific person are found, without including other similar people in the searches. As it turned out, historical photographs are slightly more difficult to analyze than modern images.
The book "City Faces" has been awarded the highest possible rating (5) by Bibliotekstjänst.
- The archive "Stockholmspolisens signalementsfotografier" (The Stockholm Police Identification Photographs) contains many fascinating life stories. We were able to link these both to people in the various photo archives and to the Roteman Register (Rotemansregistret), where more information about where the people lived can be found, says Anders.
More about some of these individuals and their life stories can be discovered by visiting the current exhibition at the Stockholm City Museum (Stockholms stadsmuseum).
Visit the exhibition
City Faces is a collaboration between the Stockholm City Museum, the Stockholm City Archives, Uppsala University and Stockholm University. The project was funded by the Swedish Research Council during the period 2021–2025. The exhibition runs from 11 March 2026 to 28 February 2027. Free admission.
- Stadens ansikten - Stockholms stad (in Swedish)
- More information about the project (summary in English)
Other links (in Swedish)
An unknown family with three children. Judging by their clothing, the photograph was taken in the mid-1860s by an unknown photographer. Published with permission from the Stockholm City Museum.