A local pizza diner has old photos of folks hanging on the wall. In these pictures and in other old photos I’ve seen, rarely was anyone smiling.
My friend suggested that the shutter speed of the cameras back then was so slow, that folks would don a serious expression rather than try and hold a smile.
Is this correct?
That was always my favorite theory. Also, photographs were very expensive, not many could afford them, and were often seen as commemorating a solemn occurance. solemn = straight face.
Or, maybe because they didn’t have the Simpsons. 
I think your friend’s explanation is correct, Malaka.
That was part of it but many old timey folks weren’t exactly cheerful. Life was considerably harder than today and the protestant work ethic may have treated smiles as frivlous. Also modern dentistry is somewhat …modern, A smile full of rotted teeth leaves a bit to be desired.
People sometimes did smile. Folks have a portrait of G/Grandfather on his favorite horse. The man looks to be quit happy with the world.
The main reason is probably that the concept of the “snapshot” was a long way off. The paradigm of the day rendered portrait photography as an extension of painting, not really as a medium in itself (I’m talking about cultural perception; not scientific actuality). The portraits you see were very formal events, very much like the painted portraits you see from the 19th century. People rarely smiled for those, either.
I have a friend who was born in Russia and has many relatives there . He once told me that grinning like a loon for portraits is considered over there to be a curious American habit. A relatively modern one, at that.
Your theory on long exposures was correct. Exposures varying from 30 to 60 seconds was not uncommon. Some photographers used a clamp type device on the back of a persons head to help facilitate them holding still for the long exposure. Fast films were not available then, the fastest “wet plates” were about ASA 3; vs some films that can be as fast as 1000 or 3200 ASA.
Being a photographer, you can see a dramatic difference in a smile in about 10 seconds. When first asked to smile, the smile is “fresh”; after about 10 seconds, no matter how good the subject is, the corners start to go down and subtle changes take place in the person’s face (eyes, etc.). In fact, if for some reason I can’t take the photo in 5 seconds or so; I ask the subject to release their smile relax for about 5 seconds and give me a “fresh” smile.
I like to look at old family photos to see if there are any babies in the photo. The babies can’t “hold still” like the adults and often look like they have no arms and legs, due to the motion during the exposure blurring them out. Also, their heads are a blur due to motion during exposure; it almost looks like their head was spinning…
The numerous family photographs I have from both sides of the family seem to show smiles for the first time around the 1920s. The old ones, say 1890-1900 or so, are of course mainly studio prints, which were part of pretty solemn occasions and the sessions probably took a while.
My guess is that by the 1920s film speed had sufficiently increased and the cost of photography had sufficienly decreased for it to show up in less formal and/or more festive occasions when Cousin Jed brought his brand-new portable camera around. So you could get the whole family in for a group portrait in under a minute and have done with it in time for dessert.
Smiles also seem more prevalent in the large family photos than in groups of three or less, which leads me to think there was probably a bit of joking and jostling as everybody got into the picture and got impatient for the rest of the group to get with the program, while getting Ma and the two kids together for a quick shoot was a simpler matter.
The long shutter speeds were a factor, but the factors that lissener explained were jsut as important. And yeah, there are plenty of other cultures who do not smile in pictures.
It always cracks me up when I see a bunch of Chinese tourists in NYC. They will be laughing and smiling and having a good time, and then they’ll line up for a photo and put on serious faces. Then when the picture is over, they will smile again. (sort of the opposite of what the typical dysfunctional American family does!)
I always figured it was because people back then didn’t have a pathological need to appear to be happy when they weren’t. Probably they thought normal expression would look better than a fake smile. After all, we don’t go around grinning like the Cheshire Cat 24 hours a day. The best portraits (painted and photographic alike) do not usually show the subject smiling. (The Mona Lisa’s enigmatic little smile is the only exception I can think of). Abraham Lincoln would look more than a little foolish on the $5 bill with a grin plastered on his face, wouldn’t he?
The very crudest example of the pathology I have experienced was when a relative whipped out a camera right after a funeral and bid us all to smile.
Oh, I’ve been in some pinhole photos. Think you can hold a smile for 4 minutes? Go ahead, read another long thread, and try to smile through the whole thing. That’s what it is like.
On a side note, don’t you think that faked smiles look damn stupid? Smiling, in very ancient times, was a sign of submission…
I think it is cultural. I’ve taken some portrait shots in an Asian country and found that a few people just wouldn’t (couldn’t) smile for the camera (most could). In this same country, you MUST NOT be smiling in your driver’s license photo. (Interestingly enought, smiling for the photo is enough to have your driver’s license application denied; not knowing how to drive is NOT grounds for denial (assuming you have paid the brokerage fee). They just don’t think “grinning like a loon” is appropriate for an important document such as a drivers license.
My sister said that she had to have her US military ID picture retaken because she was smiling.
My parents, both born in the early twenties, explained to me that their relatives are not smiling in photos for both the “it took too long to keep a smile” and “it was undignified to smile in a portrait or a sign of vanity”.
I have also heard the slow shutter speed story and believe it to be true as well. In this regard, I know they used to have a device to assist the subject in holding their head still which is visible in some of the old photos. I believe they were iron; they had a base and a shaft, and a sort of semicircular thing that was adjustable for height. Does this thing have a proper name?
BTW, it used to be a custom in some areas to photograph the dead all laid out in their boxes or whatever. They were supposed to help remember the dead and all. I think there was a specific name for this category of photography, but as usual my memory is lacking. I know that the Musuem of the Confederacy in Richmond VA (of course) once had an exhibit of these pictures.
Really! It makes sense but I’d like to know more. What
period/culture are you talking about, or was it a universal
thing? If you want to get REALLY ancient (in a way), chimpanzees smile after a fashion, but with the teeth
held together so they’re visible it’s more of a threat, while if the teeth are held apart so as not to be visible, (and I’m not sure I’m remembering this correctly) it’s a
submissive gesture.
I’d like to post my sources, but I don’t remember them… Maybe a search would turn up some interesting stuff…
Consider, too, that they may not have smiled simply because they didn’t live in an image-intensive world as we do, and had little to no idea or grasp of the concept of glamour.
With no TV, very few (if any) magazines, and having never seen their own picture before, would you instinctively know to smile? They probably, also, would never have realized how long the pictures would have lasted (100’s of years), so why bother to smile? It simply wasn’t an issue.
I’d just like to reiterate that, although it was undoubtedly a factor, to insist that the exposure time was the sole–or even the primary–factor is just silly.
Asking why they didn’t smile for portraits in the early days of photography is to assume that this cultural phenomenon came into being, somehow, along with photography, automatically as it were: that it is somehow inseparable from photography. This of course is just silly. There’s nothing at all to suggest that grinning like a Hare Krishna for a portrait was prevalent in the culture at the time; in fact examination of other portraits from the time–painted portraits–suggests overwhelmingly that it was not.
To suggest that everyone’s great-great-grandmother would have been squealing “cheese” if the camera came into being as an Instamatic just makes no sense at all.