Almost every family archive contains somebody who is gone, and every photo book made from one runs into the same question: do they go in, and how many.
There is no general answer. There is a way of deciding, and one clear mistake.
The mistake is deciding for someone else
A book of a person who has died, arriving as a surprise, is grief handed to somebody on a day they did not choose.
That is the failure mode, and it happens with the best intentions — usually from someone who found the photographs, was moved by them, and assumed the recipient would be too.
They might be. It is not predictable from outside, and it is not correlated with how close they were or how long ago it happened.
So ask. Not “would you like a photo book”, which is unanswerable, but something specific: “I found some photographs of your mother from the office — would you want those?” That has a real answer, and it hands the choice back.
Two different books
Worth separating, because they need opposite treatment.
A book ABOUT the person who died. A memorial. Everything in it is them, and the person receiving it knows exactly what they are opening. Best format for a memorial →
A book about something else, in which they appear. A family archive, a wedding, a childhood. Here they are present the way they were present — in some photographs, not all.
The second is the more common and the harder one, and the guidance below is for it.
How much is right
| Approach | Reads as |
|---|---|
| Not at all | An absence everybody notices. Usually wrong |
| In the photographs they were in, unremarked | Almost always right |
| Every photograph of them that exists | A memorial inside another book |
| One dedicated page | Right when the book is for their children or partner |
The middle row is the default. A grandmother in four of forty photographs, because she was there for those four, is how a family archive honestly looks — and it is much easier to open than either extreme.
Practical things
Do not caption them differently. “The late Shri…” on one photograph and plain names on the rest singles the person out on every page. Same treatment as everyone else.
Do not use a different, more solemn photograph. Use the one where they were laughing at something, like everybody else in the book.
Old photographs are usually the ones that need finding. They are physical, in one house, in one copy. Where a decade of photographs actually is →
When it is too soon
Sometimes the answer is not now. That is a complete answer, and the photographs do not expire — we keep your files for seven days after dispatch and then delete them, but your own originals are yours.
Make the book in a year. It is almost never worse for waiting and often much better.
The photograph that is the only one
A specific and common situation: somebody died young, or long ago, and there are four photographs of them in existence.
Then the rules above soften. Scarcity changes it — you are not choosing between frames, you are deciding whether the only surviving image of a person appears at all, and it almost always should.
Print it as large as the file allows. A single photograph on its own page, with a full name and a year under it, does more than any arrangement of it among others.
⚠️ And check the file before planning a full page around it. An old scan or a photograph of a print may not hold at that size, and for a designed product we flag that before design starts rather than after. What photo resolution you need for printing →
Frequently asked
Should I include someone who has died in a photo book? Usually yes, in the photographs they were actually in, treated the same as everyone else. The absence is more noticeable than the presence.
Should I make it a surprise? No. Ask something specific first. A book about someone who has died, arriving unannounced, is grief on a day they did not choose.
How many photographs of them? As many as they appear in naturally. Every photograph that exists turns a family book into a memorial.
Should the captions mark them out? No. Same treatment as everyone else, or it singles them out on every page.
What if it is too soon? Then it is too soon. Wait a year — the photographs are not going anywhere.
Part of our guide to choosing photographs. See also: best format for a memorial and what to leave out, deliberately.
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