# Why don't subjects in 19th and early 20th century photos smile? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 29, 2014, 7:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-subjects-in-19th-and-early-20th-century-photos-smile/680021 "2014-01-29T07:05:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![nevadaexile](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/eb8c5e/32.png) [@nevadaexile](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nevadaexile)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2014, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-subjects-in-19th-and-early-20th-century-photos-smile/680021/21 "2014-01-29T21:31:26Z")
> [@Morbo](#): > > Do you have a cite that confirms that people back then were personally embarrassed by their bad teeth, or that good teeth were even a standard of attractiveness? It seems like modern standards are being applied here. Several: > **[History of Hygiene: Bathing, Teeth Cleaning, Toileting, & Deodorizing](https://www.historyundressed.com/2008/07/history-of-hygiene-bathing-teeth.html)** > > In present times we are obsessed with bathing. How many shampoo brands are there? Soaps, razors, perfumes? Hundreds, thousands! People make ... > **[Middle Ages Hygiene](https://www.lordsandladies.org/middle-ages-hygiene.htm)** > > Go to this site providing information about the facts, history of the Middle Ages Hygiene. Fast and accurate facts about the Middle Ages Hygiene. Learn about the history of the Middle Ages Hygiene. Here’s a text of Carlos II of Spain who not only had the Hapsburg Lip, but his teeth were so terrible that he spent years trying to get them taking care of before he lost them:[On Royalty: A Very Polite Inquiry into Some Strangely Related Families - Jeremy Paxman - Google Books](http://books.google.com/books?id=1CC_XUXF4-AC&pg=PA47&lpg=PA47&dq=royalty+bad+teeth&source=bl&ots=-meuOwYZv7&sig=2G0ZQlpvGtxyLISqXHvwX1MhCD0&hl=en&sa=X&ei=mHLpUpjUNuih2AWbtoC4Ag&ved=0CCMQ6AEwADh4#v=onepage&q=royalty%20bad%20teeth&f=false) ---
**Author:** ![Morbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/morbo/32/389_2.png) [@Morbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morbo)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2014, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-subjects-in-19th-and-early-20th-century-photos-smile/680021/22 "2014-01-29T22:03:18Z")
> [@nevadaexile](#): > > Several: > > [History Undressed: History of Hygiene: Bathing, Teeth Cleaning, Toileting, & Deodorizing](http://www.historyundressed.com/2008/07/history-of-hygiene-bathing-teeth.html) > > [Middle Ages Hygiene](http://www.lordsandladies.org/middle-ages-hygiene.htm) > > Here’s a text of Carlos II of Spain who not only had the Hapsburg Lip, but his teeth were so terrible that he spent years trying to get them taking care of before he lost them:[On Royalty: A Very Polite Inquiry into Some Strangely Related Families - Jeremy Paxman - Google Books](http://books.google.com/books?id=1CC_XUXF4-AC&pg=PA47&lpg=PA47&dq=royalty+bad+teeth&source=bl&ots=-meuOwYZv7&sig=2G0ZQlpvGtxyLISqXHvwX1MhCD0&hl=en&sa=X&ei=mHLpUpjUNuih2AWbtoC4Ag&ved=0CCMQ6AEwADh4#v=onepage&q=royalty%20bad%20teeth&f=false) Those cites discuss dental hygiene in general and how poorly teeth were maintained, but I don’t see anything that says that society at the time considered bad teeth any sort of sign of unattractiveness. In fact, now that I’ve read **psychonaut** ’s [link](http://publicdomainreview.org/2013/09/18/the-serious-and-the-smirk-the-smile-in-portraiture/) he posted earlier, they seem to agree: > [@](#): > > It remains a commonly held belief that for hundreds of years people didn’t smile in pictures because their teeth were generally awful. This is not really true – bad teeth were so common that this was not seen as necessarily taking away from someone’s attractiveness. Lord Palmerston, Queen Victoria’s whig prime minister, was often described as being devastatingly good-looking, and having a ‘strikingly handsome face and figure’ despite the fact that he had a number of prominent teeth missing as a result of hunting accidents. ---
**Author:** ![GreenElf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/9de053/32.png) [@GreenElf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenElf)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2014, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-subjects-in-19th-and-early-20th-century-photos-smile/680021/23 "2014-01-29T23:11:01Z")
They hadn’t yet invented the phrase “say cheese”. ---
**Author:** ![johnpost](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f17d59/32.png) [@johnpost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/johnpost)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2014, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-subjects-in-19th-and-early-20th-century-photos-smile/680021/24 "2014-01-29T23:19:55Z")
times were hard back then. the good old days weren’t. ---
**Author:** ![F.U.Shakespeare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/aca169/32.png) [@F.U.Shakespeare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/F.U.Shakespeare)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2014, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-subjects-in-19th-and-early-20th-century-photos-smile/680021/25 "2014-01-30T01:25:24Z")
> [@gracer](#): > > [Here are some pictures](http://www.buzzfeed.com/lukelewis/18-photos-of-victorians-smiling) where people do smile. I love the first one: such excitement to have your picture taken together! It really looks like they had been trying hard to keep still with their serious face on. Wonderful pics. The lovely girl in pic 15 seems to be looking through time. ---
**Author:** ![davidmich](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e56c9b/32.png) [@davidmich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidmich)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2014, 8:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-subjects-in-19th-and-early-20th-century-photos-smile/680021/26 "2014-01-30T08:52:33Z")
Does anyone know the how far from the camera a person/people had to stand to be photographed? davidmich ---
**Author:** ![Brynhildr\_Budladottir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/3ec8ea/32.png) [@Brynhildr\_Budladottir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Brynhildr_Budladottir)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2014, 11:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-subjects-in-19th-and-early-20th-century-photos-smile/680021/27 "2014-01-30T11:09:22Z")
I was always told it was because of how long it took to take photos in the 19th and early 20th century. ---
**Author:** ![Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/earl_snake-hips_tucker/32/3269_2.png) [@Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2014, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-subjects-in-19th-and-early-20th-century-photos-smile/680021/28 "2014-01-30T16:18:54Z")
Oddly, I have a photo of my great-grandfather and his mother, (my gg-grandmother) that would have been taken around 1870. While neither of them have open mouthed smiles, they both have obvious close-mouthed smiles. As it turned out, that photo would be one of the last times they ever say each other, as my g-grandfather soon came to the New World, never to return home again. ---
**Author:** ![purplehorseshoe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/purplehorseshoe/32/2996_2.png) [@purplehorseshoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/purplehorseshoe)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2014, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-subjects-in-19th-and-early-20th-century-photos-smile/680021/29 "2014-01-30T18:34:35Z")
> [@F.U.Shakespeare](#): > > Wonderful pics. The lovely girl in pic 15 seems to be looking through time. That one is amazing. And timeless - there’s absolutely nothing in that picture to give any sort of historical, cultural or timeline context. ---
**Author:** ![Lukeinva](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lukeinva/32/17872_2.png) [@Lukeinva](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lukeinva)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2014, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-subjects-in-19th-and-early-20th-century-photos-smile/680021/30 "2014-01-30T19:08:40Z")
> [@GreenElf](#): > > They hadn’t yet invented the phrase “say cheese”. They had cheese? ---
**Author:** ![GreenElf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/9de053/32.png) [@GreenElf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenElf)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2014, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-subjects-in-19th-and-early-20th-century-photos-smile/680021/31 "2014-01-31T17:21:20Z")
> [@Lukeinva](#): > > They had cheese? It was a joke by the way. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Kenm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bc79bd/32.png) [@Kenm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kenm)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2014, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-subjects-in-19th-and-early-20th-century-photos-smile/680021/32 "2014-02-02T01:41:22Z")
> [@davidmich](#): > > Does anyone know the how far from the camera a person/people had to stand to be photographed? > davidmich It would depend on the focal length of the lens, as it does now. A full-frame 35mm film or 35mm-size digital-sensor camera’s normal lens (not telephoto or wide angle) is 50 millimetres. A camera that shoots 2[sup]1[/sup]/[sub]4[/sub] X 2[sup]1[/sup]/[sub]4[/sub]-inch images has a focal length of 80 millimetres. If you have a full-frame 35mm camera with a normal lens, point it at a subject, fill the viewing frame with the subject and see how far from the camera the person is. From that, perhaps you could extrapolate the distances for the larger glass-plate cameras of the time, probably 4 X 5 inches and 8 X 10 inches. Offhand I don’t know what the focal length of a normal lens would be for a camera that shoots 4 X 5-inch images, or the normal lens for a camera that shoots 8 X 10-inch images, but the focal lengths would be online. Or someone might post them to this thread. If you figure this out yourself, you’d have to convert millimetres to inches if you’re examining Victorian photographs measured in inches. The problem would be compounded by the early [**Daguerreotype**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daguerreotypes) process whereby a photographic plate could be divided into halves or quarters — perhaps more. Quarter-plate and half-plate daguerreotypes were cheaper than full-plate daguerreotypes, so the full-plate size of a given image would have to be known before you could figure out the focal length of the lens, assuming it’s a normal in the first place. Those are a lot of unknowns. ---
**Author:** ![brainstall](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/35a633/32.png) [@brainstall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brainstall)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2014, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-subjects-in-19th-and-early-20th-century-photos-smile/680021/33 "2014-02-02T02:03:36Z")
Number 14 looks like it belongs on the awkward family photos site. ---
**Author:** ![Kenm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bc79bd/32.png) [@Kenm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kenm)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2014, 2:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-subjects-in-19th-and-early-20th-century-photos-smile/680021/34 "2014-02-02T02:37:55Z")
> [@Kenm](#): > > It would depend on the focal length of the lens, as it does now. . . . davidmich, my explanation is wrong. I don’t know what I was thinking, because any size camera’s normal lens shows the same image as any other size camera’s normal lens. The subject would be as far away from the camera as with any modern camera. My excuse: I’m on medication that’s making me stupid and was carried away with quarter plates and half plates and other stuff, such as whether all lenses used were normals or mild telephotos sometimes used for portraits. I also tried to save text lost when the text box went blank with Firefox. I’m using Safari to post this. ---
**Author:** ![AncientHumanoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ancienthumanoid/32/278_2.png) [@AncientHumanoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AncientHumanoid)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2014, 3:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-subjects-in-19th-and-early-20th-century-photos-smile/680021/35 "2014-02-02T03:41:55Z")
[Repost from another thread about the braces sometimes used.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=16854193&postcount=28) ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2014, 3:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-subjects-in-19th-and-early-20th-century-photos-smile/680021/36 "2014-02-02T03:50:58Z")
> [@psychonaut](#): > > By contrast, Queen Victoria’s smile in #18 makes her look like a doddering halfwit. (The publisher has rather courteously captioned the image, “Her Majesty’s Gracious Smile”.) 😃 (hurt look) I always liked that one. It made her look human. IIRC, it was a candid taken at her Jubilee and she looked happy because she was. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2014, 6:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-subjects-in-19th-and-early-20th-century-photos-smile/680021/37 "2014-02-02T06:09:46Z")
I like picture of Victoria too. > [@nevadaexile](#): > > Several: > > [History Undressed: History of Hygiene: Bathing, Teeth Cleaning, Toileting, & Deodorizing](http://www.historyundressed.com/2008/07/history-of-hygiene-bathing-teeth.html) > > [Middle Ages Hygiene](http://www.lordsandladies.org/middle-ages-hygiene.htm) > > Here’s a text of Carlos II of Spain who not only had the Hapsburg Lip, but his teeth were so terrible that he spent years trying to get them taking care of before he lost them:[On Royalty: A Very Polite Inquiry into Some Strangely Related Families - Jeremy Paxman - Google Books](http://books.google.com/books?id=1CC_XUXF4-AC&pg=PA47&lpg=PA47&dq=royalty+bad+teeth&source=bl&ots=-meuOwYZv7&sig=2G0ZQlpvGtxyLISqXHvwX1MhCD0&hl=en&sa=X&ei=mHLpUpjUNuih2AWbtoC4Ag&ved=0CCMQ6AEwADh4#v=onepage&q=royalty%20bad%20teeth&f=false) Carlos II was long before photography was invented. That’s not to say that people didn’t have bad teeth, but I wouldn’t have used him as an example. There are plenty of pictures of royalty that show them smiling – Queen Victoria and her extended family were all big on amateur photography. Once Kodak released its brownie camera, people were able to take more candid photos, and you didn’t have to stand still for so long, so people were able to look more natural. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-subjects-in-19th-and-early-20th-century-photos-smile/680021.md?page=1)