People Never Smiled In Old Photographs — And Some Of The Reasons Are Seriously Dark

So why the long face? You’re not the only one to ask that question. It’s been on the minds of experts for a long time, and more than a few Google searches are dedicated to the subject. If those sullen stares hid something, they took their secrets to the grave. 

But sometimes things don’t stay buried. Historians have unearthed several clues that could provide an answer. And as you might expect from the peculiar attitudes of centuries past, they’re not all mundane. The topic of old photographs strays from the unusual to the disturbing. So grab your shovel, because we’re going to dig into the past.

You might think that selfies are a modern invention, first off. In today’s society they’re everywhere, after all. Oxford Dictionaries even promoted “selfie” to its word of the year in 2013. Well, while self portraits weren’t as common in older centuries, they did actually exist. 

The first selfie was much older than you think. Meet Robert Cornelius, a chemist who also became a pioneer in photography. He even took the earliest selfie recorded when he used himself as the test subject for his camera. On the picture’s reverse side, Robert scribbled, “The first light Picture ever taken. 1839.”

Of course, Robert wasn’t smiling in his picture. It perhaps inspired a trend, and few people showed a grin in their photographs over the decades that followed. From portraits and family photos to wedding pictures, even the most joyous occasions were recorded with somber expressions. For the most part, anyway. 

There are some rare examples of vintage smiling portraits which will really change your opinion on Victorians. But for now, let’s focus on why smiles are mysteriously absent in most of those monochrome and sepia photographs. What reasons could people possibly have to record their misery for future generations to gaze upon? 

One possibility for people looking grim is for the simple reason that they felt that way. The photography process scared them. But what could they possibly have to fear? Well, bear in mind that most people had probably never seen anything as technologically advanced as a photograph before. The whole process was probably terrifying... 

In the fledgling days of photography, you see, you couldn’t just point a compact smartphone and click the button. No, cameras were huge and bulky pieces of equipment. On top of that, there’s the naming conventions photographers use. Their lingo sounded more like a doctor’s. 

Photography was still in its infancy, and the science talk did nothing to introduce it to a wider audience. Take the rooms for example, which photographers called “operation rooms.” Sounds a bit too similar to surgery, doesn’t it? And they referred to the equipment as “instruments,” which has more scientific connotations. We’re not sure people were exactly put at ease, is the point. 

So the poor photography subjects perhaps didn’t know if they were going to get immortalized or atomized. They could’ve been in the dark about whether it would hurt or not. And what if they were literal subjects and even the photographers didn’t know what would happen? It was all a very worrying time for the models. 

Now we have cameras that can shoot multiple times a second and capture even fast-moving objects in motion. But in the advent of photography cameras struggled to capture images that shifted even slightly. This longer “exposure time,” as they say in the biz, meant subjects sat a lot longer for photos. 

Any movement among the subjects resulted in blurry photos. To avoid wasting the precious time of everyone involved, photographers asked sitters to stay as still as possible. And therein lies the problem — have you ever tried to smile for an extended period? That can really make your face muscles ache. 

So you see a lot of serious expressions on subjects’ faces. But you’re probably wondering why that didn’t change with the times. Surely as technology advanced, there’d be more smiles in photographs, right? Todd Gustavson, curator of George Eastman House, told Vox that camera technology had advanced considerably by the 1900s. 

They still had technological limitations, though. “The box cameras tended to have fixed focus lenses,” Gustavson said in 2015. “You’d have to be outside on a sunny day and pick the smallest lens, and it would still be a little fuzzy...focus down to three feet would limit it.” But more factors contributed to the phenomena. 

Before there was photography, painting was the most effective medium for capturing a person’s likeness. And as long as early cameras took to take a picture, painting one took even longer. So for the same reasons, smiles were a no-no. It’s the reason Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa portrait is so debated. 

The Mona Lisa was painted smiling, which was unusual for the time. But the truth is at first people didn’t see much distinction between portraits and photography. The Photographic Journal of America interviewed a man in 1894 who acted as a model for Jesus in religious depictions. He was of the same mind. 

The model — one Elmer Ellsworth Masterman — asked, “What is the difference between posing for a photograph and posing for a painting?” It seems the commonality was ingrained into society. And if you couldn’t smile for art, photographs were no different. Plus, who was the common man or woman to argue with Jesus? Maybe we’re having fun with that last sentence...

One theory for the lack of old-timey smiles is because dental hygiene was terrible. Almost everyone had bad teeth, so why would they display them? However, many experts are waving this idea away because if rotten smiles were the norm, no one would be self-conscious about them. Society’s views on smiling is a more likely explanation. 

Although the lack of hard evidence makes it just a suggestion, the Public Domain Review’s Nicholas Jeeves believes societal views were the answer. He’s convinced that Edwardian and Victorian cultures saw smiles as too undignified. Nicholas explained as much in an essay he wrote in 2013. 

Nicholas said, “A walk around any art gallery will reveal that the image of the open smile has, for a very long time, been deeply unfashionable...An open smile, however, is unequivocal, a signal moment of unselfconsciousness.” Famous American writer Mark Twain even weighed in on the subject in his 1913 book, Mark Twain and the Happy Island. 

Twain said, “I think a photograph is a most important document. And there is nothing more damning to go down to posterity than a silly, foolish smile caught and fixed forever.” Did you know that photographers used to ask subjects to say “prunes” instead of “cheese” so their lips would purse? It’s more evidence of a serious society. 

So why did the people of yore look down on smiling so much? According to History Extra, it’s because an unconcealed smile “lacked class.” Only certain members of the public wore grins openly, and they were considered “undesirable.” At least, that’s what the richer and more respected members of society thought. 

History Extra explained that it was only “drunks, tramps, prostitutes and buffoonish music hall performers” that smiled openly. And if you wanted your reputation to remain intact, heaven forfend you should show some teeth. This opinion lines up with the Victorian expression, “Nature gave us lips to conceal our teeth.” Wow!

Not just anyone in centuries past could sit for a photograph, either. Since the technology was new, it was also expensive. Thus, subjects would have to live a comfortable life, or else save up to have their image captured. And the kind of people who could afford such luxury wouldn’t be among the smiling poorer classes. 

No, we’re not talking about vampires — would they even show up in photographs? — but rather the view of immortality. For the people of times gone past, photography was used to preserve someone in picture form forever. There’s no greater example of this than the mostly pre-1900 tradition of post-mortem photography. 

That’s right: post-mortem as in no longer alive. In photography’s infancy, when a loved one passed away, their family would arrange a sitting for them shortly after. The subject would be posed as if they were alive and their photo saved to keep their memory alive. It wasn’t just adults, either. 

Children and even pets were photographed like this. And sometimes their loved ones would pose right alongside them for a last family portrait. It might be hard to tell the living relatives apart from the departed ones in old photos. But if you look closely the deceased are in sharper focus, simply because they didn’t move. 

When photography was in its infancy, it wasn’t just the lower classes that grinned like maniacs. It was also… Well, maniacs. Angus Trumble, who works as director for Australia’s National Portrait Gallery, spoke to Time in 2016. He said brig grins were “associated with madness, lewdness, loudness, drunkenness, all sorts of states of being that were not particularly decorous.”

If you were smiling widely in public, chances are you were mad. Clearly you didn’t have enough control over your emotions, so it had to be hysteria. Of course, the Victorians and Edwardians didn’t have the best grasp on what contributed to madness. They also thought menstruation brought on mania. That’s just crazy talk. 

The non-smiling trend continued and the word “prunes” was still associated with photography until around 1943. That year an issue of The Big Spring Herald announced, “Now here’s something worth knowing. It’s a formula for smiling when you have your picture taken. It comes from former Ambassador Joseph E. Davies, and is guaranteed to make you look pleasant no matter what you’re thinking.” 

The article continued, “Mr. Davies disclosed the formula while having his own picture taken on the set of his ‘Mission to Moscow.’ It’s simple. Just say ‘Cheese,’ It’s an automatic smile. ‘I learned that from a politician,’ Mr. Davies chuckled. ‘An astute politician, a very great politician. But, of course, I cannot tell you who he was.’”

There are examples of old photography subjects grinning, though. In fact, there’s a whole Flickr group dedicated to them called “Smiling Victorians.” It wasn’t unheard of in other cultures either, such as the famous 1904 image called “Eating rice, China.” The name says it all, but it’s a great example of how much difference a smile can make.  

“A Kiss beneath the Mistletoe” is an even older peek behind the Victorian curtain of seriousness. Taken in 1880, it shows an unnamed couple sharing a festive smooch. Both of them are smiling, and the lady especially has an ear-to-ear grin. They don’t look like the wealthiest pair in the world — so that conforms with one no-smile theory — but they do look happy! 

Some open-minded photographer in 1897 captured an excellent picture titled “Goofing around.” It’s quite a departure from the largely stoic photos of the era given the subjects are clearly having a great time. All three subjects are balanced on a wooden beam having some fun. They’re well-dressed too, proving not everyone in higher echelons were uptight in front of a lens. 

The smartly-dressed ladies and gentlemen in “Hats in the Side Yard” look like they’re enjoying themselves — except for the guy in the back who’s wearing a scowl, albeit possibly a comical one. They seem to be laughing over one of the women taking the second man’s hat. None of them conform to the Victorian stereotypes of the grinning buffoon, though. 

It appears that even in older photographs some occasions were too special to contain with dour expressions. Take this photo of a mother from the late Victorian period, for instance. Childhood was a precarious time back then, and this mom was probably just happy that her kid was happy.

Victorians absolutely loved the beach. There was a whole culture surrounding the seaside and the attractions which the ocean could provide. And this was probably healthy, since the cities were so full of waste and smog. These kids are getting away from it all and playing in the water, their joy clear for all to see.

The beach had plenty to provide for adults too. Of course, standards of the time meant there was no way a woman could sunbathe in anything but beachwear that covered the whole body, but these ladies don’t seem to mind. Replace the outfits and the old sailboats, and this picture could’ve been taken today.

So there you go, there is some photographic evidence of people smiling in older photos, it’s just a lot rarer. And with our modern eyes, they don’t look crazy, drunk, or poor. In fact, it humanizes them. It shows us a side of old fashioned society that’s hard to imagine existed. It’s a fascinating peek behind the curtain.