In 95% of photos, people looked like they were walking up the stairs to the Guillotine. What was up with that? Bad attitudes or bad teeth?
Photographic emulsions of the day were very slow.
The subject had to hold a pose for several seconds or the picture was smeared.
Hard to hold a smile that long.
In 95% of photos, people looked like they were walking up the stairs to the Guillotine. What was up with that? Bad attitudes or bad teeth?
The phenomenon you describe was due to several different but interrelated factors:
1. Photographic technology (long exposure times requiring absolute stillness of the subjects).
2. In the days before cheap, instant photos, digital photography, etc., being photographed was a rare and hence serious business. Nowadays, a photographer can take twenty shots or more, and discard all but the best.
3. Sociological: It may have simply been considered more proper to present a composed, sedate demeanor and a stern facial expression, such as one might present in, e.g., church. Also, especially scions of the Upper Class - back then - may have been exhorted by their elders to act in a dignified manner.
4. Bad teeth, etc.
Regards,
Were I suddenly transported back 100 years, once I got over the amazement, I'd soon be frowning as I tried getting by without some of the basics that enable todays poor to live in better comfort that even the wealthiest of 100 years ago.
People of influence and their families adopted a grave manner in public, lending to their gravitas.
Neither did they crack knuckles or jokes according to my manual “How To Be A Man” published in 1911.
I think they look as they do because of the time lapse for the photo to take....too hard to keep a smile that long...it wasn’t just click and your done...