When did it become common to smile for a photograph?

Question

In old photos everyone looks so stoic. No matter if it's a yearbook picture or a family pic, no one ever smiled. When did people start smiling for photos, and why?

Inquiring minds want to know :).

Answer 1

People always wanted to smile, but in the "olden" days, film was soooo slow and cameras more so. So people had to sit frozen for several minutes until the exposure was complete. Out of site of the photographer were often wire supports, holding the heads and necks of the subjects absolutely still. Needless to say, it hurt so smile without moving so long!

As cameras and film became faster, and as cameras like the Kodak Brownies brought photography to the masses, you began to see more natural expressions.

Answer 2

The previous answer is correct so give them the points. Indeed prior to the advent of the Brownie box camera and roll film, you just couldn't be very spontaneous with your photos. Before the advent of the Brownie camera photography was primarily in the hands of Professionals. Although long exposures were a big problem in the early days of photography, by about 1850 with improved lens technology and new photographic processes such as the glass collodion process you could get exposures in less than a few seconds quite unlike Daguerres first experiments which could take upwards of 10 minutes for a single exposure, and a far cry from Niepces exposures that would take upwards of 8 hours.
Although time was somewhat of a concern the real problem was the types of cameras that were being used. View cameras are incredibly bulky, and are not easy to set up which often destroys spontaneity( I shoot with a view camera, and trust me, when the camera comes out, people are in awe, and lose their smile almost immediately as both curiousity and fear sets in). Now on the other hand the brownie was quite portable an incredibly easy to use. People for the first time didn't have to hire a photographer to photograph special occasions. Anything and everything was being photographed from birthday parties to graduations and because the Brownie camera was both fast and portable, the camera was able to catch people in candid moments of joy and was creating a new type of photographic aesthetic spawned by non-professionals.
I would also like to add that indeed there are cultural differences. For snapshots people here in Japan love to smile, but get them in a studio, and they become very stoic and serious. I think the same can be said for many other cultures, there is a difference in character between getting a snapshot and being in a studio.

Answer 3

George and the others are quite right about the technical aspect. To put a date on it, spontaneous pictures & smiles became possible from the 1890's with the introduction of the Kodak 1888. This was the first camera to use rolls of film (instead of plate negatives) and it was marketed like crazy. The Kodak was a lot faster and more portable than any camera before it.
But there is also a cultural aspect. I've traveled a bit and I can tell you from experience that even today there are parts of the world where people WANT to look stoic. In rural areas of Cuba or Turkey for example, it's still pretty rare to have your picture taken at all, so when a tourist comes along with a camera and offers to send you a print, they prefer it to be a formal portrait. Couples will gladly stand with their arms around each other in front of their house, stiff as boards, and stare seriously into the lens. They don't mind if you take a few candid shots as well, but they consider it a bit silly - not the kind of picture they'd want for themselves.
This summer my wife and I were traveling in Mongolia and stayed a few days with a nomadic family in the middle of nowhere. It was like entering a time warp. We loved it. This family of 7 had two tents that were decorated with the barest of possessions, they had about 40 horses, a flock of sheep, a couple of dogs, and a horse cart. A lot of families also have a motorcycle, or a cell phone, or even a tv with a sattelite dish (rigged to a solar panel), but otherwise it's the same idea. Out of a total population of 2.5 million people, roughly one million Mongolians still live this way. They wear traditional overcoats when they tend to their cattle, they sip their vodka made out of fermented horse milk, they work hard, they look out for eachother and they don't give a hoot about the rest of the world. So again, I offered to take a picture and mail it to them (despite being nomadic, they do keep in touch with the mail service.) To this familiy however, even a portrait was too frivolous. But they did have a request: could I please mail them a photograph of their horses! So I did. It actually turned out pretty well, with their ger and the rugged hills in the background.
But um, I digress... for the most part the stoic pictures are due to the ancient technology :-)

Answer 4

When photography first started in order to get a clear picture the subject had to sit perfectly still for like half an hour to expose it properly. Have you ever tried holding a perfect smile for half an hour?

About the time of the industrial revolution as far as artistic photography was concerened they were taking pics expressing their emotions and their lives. With all the child labor abuse, poverty, and depressions it would have looked kind of funny to see them smiling up in the sweatshops and the message wouldn't have been nearly as effective.

Answer 5

One day the Kraft family was taking a group picture and the youngest daughter was eating a slice of cheese and her mother asked what she had in her hand and she replied CHEEEEEESE as the photographer took the picture and the rest is history.

Answer 6

I'm guessing that because in the old days a picture took a long time to expose. The subject had to stand real still for a couple of minutes. That is why their expression is very plain.

Answer 7

the reason people in old photos didn't smile is that the picture took a lot longer to take in the old day...

if you moved at all the image would be blurred so to make it easier people just stood like statures

Answer 8

hmmm, quite an interesting question. all i know is that photographs now look sooooo much better 'cause people are smiling... don't you think so?? =D have a great day!

Answer 9

Dentistry was not what it is today and all of the cosmetic dental availability has people less conscientious.