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Why do Victorian People Not Smile in Photos?
When you look at old 19th and early 20th century photos, most people aren’t smiling.
The general belief is that they didn’t. People look very dour even in things like wedding photos. So it must be that smiling wasn’t a thing. It’s even been said that they were miserable people who never actually smiled.
Long Exposure Times and Smiles
The most common theory is that the long exposure times made it hard to capture smiles. If you try to freeze yourself in a smile, then the chances are you won’t look great.
So, people were told not to smile because it would end up looking silly. You had to stay still for quite some time. However, that doesn’t entirely explain it…because even as exposure times got shorter, people still didn’t smile.
It Was Probably Just Cultural
The actual explanation is more likely something else.
Modern photography has split into serious artistic photography and snapshots. The subjects of paintings did not smile because they were being posed.
The goal was to accurately record the subject, to grant them a sort of immortality. Photography was also expensive. It took place at serious events, and a wedding might be happy? It’s still serious.
And smiling was considered a little silly. You didn’t want to be smiling in your portrait.
Over time, things changed. But if you look at corporate photography, you will still see quite a number of people not smiling. Why? Because they want to look serious and in charge.
Meanwhile, the “everyday” photos we take, which our ancestors would not even have imagined? We want to look happy. So we smile.
It’s as simple as that. No, the Victorians weren’t that serious and, indeed, there are plenty of photos from that era where the subjects did smile.
But they wanted to be seen as serious by posterity. We, on the other hand, want to be seen as happy. Even if we aren’t.
I wonder what that says about our deeper culture.
