![]() ![]() But in the early days of the art, it was indebted to a tradition of portraiture in painting. Today, photography is a means of recording our lives as they're lived. 2) Early photography was heavily influenced by painting - which meant no smilingįour-year-old girls probably didn't act like this in 1900. Any general cultural theories involve a few leaps of faith - but these try to explain why old photos look so sad. That suggests there were also cultural reasons people didn't smile in old pictures. ![]() Yet smiles were still uncommon in the early part of the century. These cameras were still slow by today's standards, but not so slow that it was impossible to smile. ![]() As George Eastman House curator Todd Gustavson told me when I was researching the history of the selfie, exposure times had gotten a lot shorter by 1900 with the introduction of the Brownie and other cameras. In theory, you'd want to maintain as still a position as possible, and it's harder to maintain a smile than a relatively flat facial expression.īut that's only part of the story - and was really only a huge factor in the very early days of photography. One figure in the center is blurry, most likely because he moved slightly during the long exposure time. The picture above illustrates why early cameras made it harder to capture a smile. Moderators of the Free Church of Scotland in 1860, looking sad and blurry. That way, the picture wouldn't look blurry. One common explanation for the lack of smiles in old photos is that long exposure times - the time a camera needs to take a picture - made it important for the subject of a picture to stay as still as possible. 1) Very early technology made it harder to capture smiles So why did people in old photos look like they'd just heard the worst news of their life? We can't know for sure, but a few theories help us guess what was behind all that black-and-white frowning. If your wedding photos look like this one from 1900, your marriage is doomed. Like in this depressing wedding photo from 1900: That's led to the popular belief that people simply didn't smile in old photos. In most old photos - those taken in the 19th century and early 20th century - people aren't smiling. ![]()
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