  A review of our works providing a theoretical description of incoherent pion
photoproduction on the deuteron is presented. The existing $\gamma d\to\pi NN$
data are analysed, especially those obtained more recently by the CLAS
Collaboration at JLab, the A2 Collaboration at MAMI at Mainz, and the
PION@MAX-lab Collaboration at Lund. A procedure, which accounts for the final
state interactions (FSI), is applied to extract $\gamma n\to\pi N$ differential
cross sections from the deuteron data. The role of FSI is discussed. We also
comment on the results of other works in connection with some discrepancies
seen in comparing the model with experiment. The electromagnetic properties of
baryon $N^\ast$ resonances, improved using the extracted $\gamma n\to\pi N$
differential cross sections, are presented. A model description of the cross
section data from charged-pion photoproduction reactions $\gamma
d\to\pi^{\pm}NN$ near threshold is also given. The $\gamma d\to\pi^-pp$ data
are used to extract the $E_{0+}$ multipole and total crsoss sections of the
reaction $\gamma n\to\pi^-p$ near threshold.
