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Why didn't people smile in old-timey photographs? A smile meant something different back then.

Our perceptions of smiling have changed dramatically since the 1800s.

via Public Domain

Photos from the 1800s were so serious.

If you've ever perused photographs from the 19th and early 20th century, you've likely noticed how serious everyone looked. If there's a hint of a smile at all, it's oh-so-slight, but more often than not, our ancestors looked like they were sitting for a sepia-toned mug shot or being held for ransom or something. Why didn't people smile in photographs? Was life just so hard back then that nobody smiled? Were dour, sour expressions just the norm?

Most often, people's serious faces in old photographs are blamed on the long exposure time of early cameras, and that's true. Taking a photo was not an instant event like it is now; people had to sit still for many minutes in the 1800s to have their photo taken.

Ever try holding a smile for only one full minute? It's surprisingly difficult and very quickly becomes unnatural. A smile is a quick reaction, not a constant state of expression. Even people we think of as "smiley" aren't toting around full-toothed smiles for minutes on end. When you had to be still for several minutes to get your photo taken, there was just no way you were going to hold a smile for that long.

But there are other reasons besides long exposure times that people didn't smile in early photographs.


mona lisa, leonardo da vinci, classic paintings, famous smiles, art"Mona Lisa" by Leonardo da Vinci, painted in 1503Public domain

The non-smiling precedent had already been set by centuries of painted portraits

The long exposure times for early photos may have contributed to serious facial expressions, but so did the painted portraits that came before them. Look at all of the portraits of famous people throughout history prior to cameras. Sitting to be painted took hours, so smiling was out of the question. Other than the smallest of lip curls like the Mona Lisa, people didn't smile for painted portraits, so why would people suddenly think it normal to flash their pearly whites (which were not at all pearly white back then) for a photographed one? It simply wasn't how it was done.

A smirk? Sometimes. A full-on smile? Practically never.

old photos, black and white photos, algerian immigrant, turban, Algerian immigrant to the United States. Photographed on Ellis Island by Augustus F. Sherman.via William Williams/Wikimedia Commons

Smiling usually indicated that you were a fool or a drunkard

Our perceptions of smiling have changed dramatically since the 1800s. In explaining why smiling was considered taboo in portraits and early photos, art historian Nicholas Jeeves wrote in Public Domain Review:

"Smiling also has a large number of discrete cultural and historical significances, few of them in line with our modern perceptions of it being a physical signal of warmth, enjoyment, or indeed of happiness. By the 17th century in Europe it was a well-established fact that the only people who smiled broadly, in life and in art, were the poor, the lewd, the drunk, the innocent, and the entertainment […] Showing the teeth was for the upper classes a more-or-less formal breach of etiquette."

drunks, classic painting, owls, malle babbe, paintings"Malle Babbe" by Frans Hals, sometime between 1640 and 1646Public domain


In other words, to the Western sensibility, smiling was seen as undignified. If a painter did put a smile on the subject of a portrait, it was a notable departure from the norm, a deliberate stylistic choice that conveyed something about the artist or the subject.

Even the artists who attempted it had less-than-ideal results. It turns out that smiling is such a lively, fleeting expression that the artistically static nature of painted portraits didn't lend itself well to showcasing it. Paintings that did have subjects smiling made them look weird or disturbing or drunk. Simply put, painting a genuine, natural smile didn't work well in portraits of old.

As a result, the perception that smiling was an indication of lewdness or impropriety stuck for quite a while, even after Kodak created snapshot cameras that didn't have the long exposure time problem. Even happy occasions had people nary a hint of joy in the photographs that documented them.

Another reason why people didn't smile in old photos is that dental hygiene wasn't the same as it is today, and people may have been self-conscious about their teeth. “People had lousy teeth, if they had teeth at all, which militated against opening your mouth in social settings,” Angus Trumble, the director of the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra, Australia, and author of A Brief History of the Smile, said, according to Time.


wedding party photo, wedding, old weddings, black and white, serious photos, no smilesEven wedding party photos didn't appear to be joyful occasions.Wikimedia Commons


Then along came movies, which may have changed the whole picture

So how did we end up coming around to grinning ear to ear for photos? Interestingly enough, it may have been the advent of motion pictures that pushed us towards smiling being the norm.

Photos could have captured people's natural smiles earlier—we had the technology for taking instant photos—but culturally, smiling wasn't widely favored for photos until the 1920s. One theory about that timing is that the explosion of movies enabled us to see emotions of all kinds playing out on screen, documenting the fleeting expressions that portraits had failed to capture. Culturally, it became normalized to capture, display and see all kind of emotions on people's faces. As we got more used to that, photo portraits began portraying people in a range of expression rather than trying to create a neutral image of a person's face.

Changing our own perceptions of old photo portraits to view them as neutral rather than grumpy or serious can help us remember that people back then were not a bunch of sourpusses, but people who experienced as wide a range of emotion as we do, including joy and mirth. Unfortunately, we just rarely get to see them in that state before the 1920s.

This article originally appeared last year.

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Education

French cultural expert shares Paris' biggest secret: Many buildings are fake

"As normal people, you have no idea."

via LucileHR/YouTube

French YouTuber Lucile.

One reason people fall in love with Paris when they see it for the first time is that it looks exactly as it does in the movies or photographs. It is romantic, charming, and effortlessly beautiful, with its elegant boulevards, old stone buildings, cozy cafés, and iconic landmarks like the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe.

A significant reason why Paris is so absorbing is that it is architecturally consistent, and the city and its citizens put a great deal of effort into maintaining that consistency. In a new video by Lucile, a French woman who creates cultural commentary videos about Paris and French culture, the city even goes so far as to create “fake” buildings to maintain its consistently beautiful appearance. "A lot of the fake buildings in Paris really blend in nicely with their surroundings and are so hard to spot. Just by looking at them, it would be impossible to notice,” Lucile explains.

- YouTubeyoutu.be

In the video, Lucile reveals that one building in her neighborhood appears to be a quaint French apartment building that was once social housing. Still, a little investigation shows that it's actually a massive data center complete with air conditioners on the roof—a rarity in Paris. The A/C units are there because the servers generate an incredible amount of heat.

Another building, 145, rue La Fayette, which has been called the "entrance to the underworld," is holding a secret. The doors are fake, allowing it to blend in with the neighborhood, and the roof is entirely flat. However, in reality, the entire building is actually an air vent for a French Metro.

Fake Facade in Paris hiding a Subway Vent - 145 Rue la Fayette, 75010 Paris, France.
byu/hypersite inarchitecture


Why do a lot of buildings in France have a similar design style? It’s because they underwent a massive redesign in the mid-19th century by an architect named Georges-Eugène Haussmann, a French official who served as prefect of Seine and demolished many of the old, cramped buildings from the Middle Ages. “In 1853, Haussmann came in, and he was basically given full powers to redesign Paris in a better way,” Lucile explains. “So, he went ahead, and he tore down entire neighborhoods and thousands of buildings. And instead, he built the elegant buildings and wide avenues we still have today in Paris. Haussmann really wanted to achieve a uniform look, so he put some really strict rules in place. And this is why a lot of the buildings in Paris look the same—they have the same height, the same façades, and the same balconies. Haussmann's influence on Paris was huge because today, around 60% of all of Paris' buildings are Haussmann-type buildings.”

france, paris architecture, seine, georges-eug\u00e8ne haussmann, paris buildings, historic paris2 Boulevard Haussmann, Parisvia Neoclassicism Enthusiast/Wikimedia Commons


Lucile also notes that 1972 is an important year for the city because, at a time when it was losing many classic buildings, a proposal for a brutalist block building was made to replace L'Amandier d'Or, a beautiful Haussmann design. "Luckily, people pushed back, and it became a pretty big thing. The French government had to step in, and they blocked the project, requiring the bank to preserve the façade,” Lucile explains. The amusing thing is that if you walk to the back of the preserved façade, it's actually a 1970s office building.


“This was one of the first times that Paris did the fake buildings,” Lucile says. “A lot of people wish they had kept the original building and renovated everything, not just the front. But, some other people think it's a great way to keep Paris’s charm while making room for more modern buildings. And wherever you stand, either way, this building set the trend.”

There’s something very satisfying about learning that there is a small amount of artifice in keeping Paris’s magical charm, like the false-front buildings you see at Disneyland or on a film set. But there’s something even more wonderful to know that the people of Paris, and its leaders, put so much effort into preserving its incredible ambiance.

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History (Education)

1981 Afterschool Special, 'The Wave', still holds up with its lessons about fascism

The chilling story was based on a real high school experiment.

Image by Elias from Pixabay

"The Wave" demonstrates how easy it is to pull people into fascism.

"What are you watching?" my 13-year-old son asked.

"An old Afterschool Special," I responded.

"What's an 'Afterschool Special'?" he asked.

Hoo boy. Kids these days have no idea how different television was for those of us who grew up in the '80s or how many core memories we have wrapped up in the ABC Afterschool Special.

I briefly explained and then he sat down to watch with me. It was 2022. A discussion about fascism on X had led me to look up "The Wave," a 1981 ABC Afterschool Special based on a real-life high school experiment in Palo Alto, California, in 1967.

In the real experiment, first-year history teacher Ron Jones had students at Cubberley High School engage in a simulation of how fascism spreads as part of a lesson on World War II, with him playing the role of the dictator. His intent was to show skeptical students how the Nazis came to power by creating a social movement he dubbed the Third Wave.

afterschool special, family, kids, specials, afterschool programmingFamily watching television. Image via Canva.

"It started out as a fun game with the most popular teacher at school," Mark Hancock, one of the students in Jones' history homeroom class, told Palo Alto Online in 2017. "He told us, 'If you're an active participant, I'll give you an A; if you just go along with it, I'll give you a C; if you try a revolution, I'll give you an F, but if your revolution succeeds, I'll give you an A.'"

Hancock said he started off planning to get that revolution A, but it quickly grew beyond grades and turned into something real. "At the end, I was scared to death," he shared.

It began with Jones rallying the students around the idea of "strength through discipline" and "strength through community." He had them engage in regimented behaviors and handed out membership cards. At first, it was just fun, but students began to enjoy feeling like part of a special community. Jones pushed the importance of following the rules. The students even formed a "secret police" to monitor other students, and if someone broke a Third Wave rule, they'd be reported and publicly "tried" by the class.

The students got wrapped up in it to a frightening degree and even Jones found himself enjoying the way the students responded to him. "It was pretty intoxicating," he told Palo Alto Online.

But according to Verde Magazine, Jones felt like he'd lost control of it by the fourth day.

The experiment ended at the end of the week with a rally. Jones told the students they were actually part of a real national Third Wave movement and that the national leader was going to speak to them at the rally. Jones turned on the televisions to white static and watched the students eagerly wait for their leader to speak. That's when he broke the news to them that they'd fallen for a totalitarian regime. Instead of a Third Wave leader speech, he played them a video of a Nazi rally.

Nazi rally, history, fascism, nazi germany, nazism Nazi Party Congress in Nuremberg, September 8, 1938.Image via Canva.

According to a school newspaper at the time, most students were disillusioned. But one student said, "It was probably the most interesting unit I've had. It was successful in its goal to achieve the emotions of the Germans under the Nazi regime."

"The Wave" follows the true story quite closely and still holds valuable lessons. One chilling scene shows a kid who had been sort of an outcast prior to the "movement" saying, "For the first time, I feel like I'm a part of something great." He was particularly crushed to find out it was all a fascist facade.

As is the cyclical nature of history, "The Wave" and what it can teach us is especially relevant today. According to NPR, "a survey of more than 500 political scientists finds that the vast majority think the United States is moving swiftly from liberal democracy toward some form of authoritarianism." The benchmark survey, known as Bright Line Watch, had "U.S.-based professors rate the performance of American democracy from zero (dictatorship) to 100 (perfect democracy)," noted NPR. "After President Trump's election in November, scholars gave American democracy a rating of 67. Several weeks into Trump's second term, that figure plummeted to 55."

John Carey, co-director of Bright Line Watch and a professor of government at Dartmouth, summed up the matter by saying, "We're moving in the wrong direction."

Since President Trump's election in November, various publications worldwide have suggested that much of Trump's rhetoric echoes that of Nazi Germany, with some pointing out parallels between each administration's first 100 days in office. Other publications have criticized the comparison.

At any rate, this afterschool special is incredibly timely. If you can get past the '80s aesthetic, it's worth watching. Even my teen kids got into it, once they stopped making fun of the hair and film quality.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

This article originally appeared three years ago. It has been updated.

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This anti-slavery feature of the Statue of Liberty is a symbol for how we treat our history

Lady Liberty's broken shackles are "hidden in plain sight."

Photo credit: Canva

The Statue of Liberty has broken shackles at her feet, which people can't really see.

If Americans were asked to describe the Statue of Liberty without looking at it, most of us could probably describe her long robe, the crown on her head, a lighted torch in her right hand and a tablet cradled in her left. Some might remember it's inscribed with the date of the American Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776.

But there's a significant detail most of us would miss. It's a feature that points to why Lady Liberty was created and gifted to us in the first place. At her feet, where her robe drapes the ground, lay a broken shackle and chains—a symbol of the abolishment of slavery.

statue of liberty, chains, broken shackles, anti-slavery, abolitionThe Statue of Liberty bears broken shackles at her feet.Photo credit: Canva (left), Atsme (right)

Most people see the Statue of Liberty as a symbol of our welcoming immigrants and mistakenly assume that's what she was meant to represent. Indeed, the opening words of Emma Lazarus's poem engraved on a plaque at the Statue of Liberty—"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free"—have long evoked images of immigrants arriving on our shores, seeking a better life in The American Dream.

But that plaque wasn't added to the statue until 1903, nearly two decades after the statue was unveiled. The original inspiration for the monument was emancipation, not immigration.

According to a Washington Post interview with historian Edward Berenson, the concept of Lady Liberty originated when French anti-slavery activist—and huge fan of the United States' Constitution—Édouard de Laboulaye organized a meeting of other French abolitionists in Versailles in June 1865, just a few months after the American Civil War ended. "They talked about the idea of creating some kind of commemorative gift that would recognize the importance of the liberation of the slaves," Berenson said.

Laboulaye enlisted a sculptor, Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi, to come up with ideas. One of the first models, circa 1870, had Lady Liberty holding the broken shackles and chains in her left hand. In the final iteration, her left hand wrapped around a tablet instead and the anti-slavery symbolism of the shackle and chain was moved to her feet.

Dr. Joy DeGruy, author of "Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America's Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing," often shares the story of how the chains were moved and how the shackles have been a neglected piece of Lady Liberty's history, even for those who visited the landmark. As she points out, both the shackles at her feet and the history of why they are there have been "hidden in plain sight."

Writer Robin Wright pondered in The New Yorker what Laboulaye would think of our country today. The America that found itself embroiled in yet another civil rights movement in 2020 because we still can't seem to get the whole "liberty and justice for all" thing down pat. The America that spent the century after slavery enacting laws and policies specifically designed to keep Black Americans down, followed by decades of continued social, economic and political oppression. The America that sometimes does the right thing, but only after tireless activism manages to break through a ton of resistance to changing the racism-infused status quo.

The U.S. has juggled dichotomies and hypocrisies in our national identity from the very beginning. The same founding father who declared "that all men are created equal" enslaved more than 600 human beings in his lifetime. The same people who celebrated religious freedom forced their Christian faith on Native peoples. Our most celebrated history of "liberty" and "freedom" is inseparable from our country's violent subjugation of entire races and ethnicities, and yet we compartmentalize rather than acknowledge that two things can be equally true at the same time.

declaration of independence, founding fathers, u.s. history, american revolutionThe signing of the Declaration of IndependenceJohn Trumbull

Every nation on earth has problematic history, but what makes the U.S. different is that our problematic history is also our proudest history. Our nation was founded during the heyday of the transatlantic slave trade on land that was already occupied. The profound and world-changing document on which our government was built is the same document that was used to legally protect and excuse the enslavement of Black people. The house in which the President of the United States sits today was built partially by enslaved people. The deadliest war we've ever fought was over the "right" to enslave Black people.

The truth is that blatant, violent racism was institutionalized from the very beginning of this country. For most of us, that truth has always been treated as a footnote rather than a feature in our history educations. Until we really reckon with the full truth of our history—which it seems like we are finally starting to do—we won't ever get to see the full measure of what our country could be.

statue of liberty, american history, abolition, u.s. symbolismThe Statue of Liberty symbolizes American freedom and liberty that we're still grappling with.Photo credit: Canva

In some ways, the evolution of the design of the Statue of Liberty—the moving of the broken shackle and chain from her hands to being half hidden beneath her robe, as well as the movement of our perception of her symbolism from abolition to immigration—is representative of how we've chosen to portray ourselves as a nation. We want people to think: Hey, look at our Declaration of Independence! See how we welcome immigrants! We're so great! (Oh, by the way, hereditary, race-based chattel slavery was a thing for longer than emancipation has been on our soil. And then there was the 100 years of Jim Crow. Not to mention how we've broken every promise made to Native Americans. And honestly, we haven't even been that nice to immigrants either). But look, independence and a nod to immigration! We're so great!

The thing is that we can be so great. The foundation of true liberty and justice for all, even with all its cracks, is still there. The vision in our founding documents was truly revolutionary. We just have to decide to actually build the country we claim to have built—one that truly lives up to the values and ideals it professes for all people.

This article first appeared five years ago and has been updated.

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