We all know that slow film speeds made folks hold a pose and therefore, they looked dour. As technology advanced, people could be more spontaneous.
When, exactly did this happen?
If this page is accurate: No later than 1863, courtesy of Flora Rankin and Lewis Carroll. Per this reddit article, technically feasible in the 1840s onward:
How exact would you like?
My guess is that lack of smiling has nothing to do with technology of film. Sure, you had to sit still for a long time with early photography…but you can sit with a smile, if you want to. The real reason is that nobody wanted to.
Nobody smiles in famous classic paintings, either. Smiling would have ruined a formal portrait.
(Even the Mona Lisa’s famous smirk, is only barely recognizable as a smile by modern standards.)
Portraits were serious business back in the early days of photography. Maybe because it was expensive. But I’m guessing that it was just a cultural thing—taking a photograph was a very formal event, and you were expected to treat it with dignity.Like going to church.
Smiling or acting frivolously in front of a camera would probably have been viewed as rude and socially unacceptable.
We have no photos of my grandfather smiling, even though certainly in his day it was quite possible. He found it undignified, an attitude he learned from his father, who was around when smiling photos were rare.
Looking it up on Google Ngram, I find a reference to smiling in a photograph – the photographer actually encouraging it – in 1872.
It’s in The Religious Magazine and Monthly REview, vol. 48 (1) pp. 86+, July 1872, in an article “Random Readings” by E.H. Sears. The Section “How we Look” on pp. 91-2 contains the exhortation. You can find it here:
There are other examples from later in the 19th century, as well.
I don’t find any entries for “smiling daguerreotype”, or variations thereof. But this cite, from 1890, speaks of a smiling face on a daguerreotype:
From Godey’s Magazine vol. 120, p. 470 (1890), story “The Spectre Castle” by Annie Maria Barnes. It’s fiction, so maybe nobody ever smiled on a daguerreotype.
Here’s another reference to a smiling face in a daguerreotype. It’s fiction, too, and recent, at that:
Here’s a reference to a smiling mother and child on a daguerreotype. Not fiction, for once, although we get to image, and no date (although presumably before about 1860, because who made daguerrotypes after that?):
So certainly by about 1860 there had been pictures of smiling people.
edited to add:
Here’s a poem froim 1857 that speaks of “Melianotypes with all the smiles and graces…”
Lincoln isn’t especially solemn in these photos; he died in 1865:
http://images.politico.com/global/2013/02/05/130205_abraham_lincoln_ap_605_605.jpg
http://dentistusa.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/abraham-lincoln.jpg
http://www.toomanymornings.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Lincoln.jpg
Honestly, for a guy who dealt with crippling depression all his life, they look absolutely giddy.