Simply take a look at this pho­to. Simply take a look at this younger woman’s smile. We all know her identify: O‑o-dee. And we all know that she was a mem­ber of the Kiowa tribe within the Okla­homa Ter­ri­to­ry. And we all know that the pho­to was tak­en in 1894. However that smile is sort of a time machine. O‑o-dee may simply as properly have donned some conventional/historic garb, posed for her buddies, and had them placed on the ol’ sepia fil­ter on her cam­period app.

However why? What’s it in regards to the smile?

For one factor, we aren’t used to see­ing them in previous pho­tographs, espe­cial­ly ones from the nineteenth cen­tu­ry. When pho­tog­ra­phy was first invent­ed, expo­sures may take 45 min­utes. Hav­ing a por­trait tak­en meant sit­ting inventory nonetheless for a really very long time, so smil­ing was proper out. It was solely close to the top of the nineteenth cen­tu­ry that shut­ter speeds improved, as did emul­sions, imply­ing that spon­ta­neous moments may very well be cap­tured. Nonetheless, smil­ing was not a part of many cul­tures. It may very well be seen as unseem­ly or undig­ni­fied, and plenty of peo­ple not often sat for pho­tos any­manner. Pho­tographs had been seen by many peo­ple as a “pas­sage to immor­tal­i­ty” and seri­ous­ness was seen as less ephemer­al.

Pres­i­dents didn’t offi­cial­ly smile till Franklin D. Roo­sevelt, which got here at a time of nice sor­row and uncer­tain­ty for a nation within the grips of the Nice Depres­sion. The pres­i­dent did it as a result of Amer­i­cans couldn’t.

Smil­ing appears so nat­ur­al to us, it’s arduous to suppose it hasn’t all the time been part of artwork. One of many first issues infants study is the pow­er of a smile, and the way it can soften hearts throughout. So why hasn’t the smile been com­mon­place in artwork?

His­to­ri­an Col­in Jones wrote a complete e book about this, referred to as The Smile Rev­o­lu­tion in Eigh­teenth Cen­tu­ry Paris, begin­ing with a 1787 self-por­trait by Élis­a­beth Vigée Le Brun that depict­ed her and her infant. Not like the coy half-smiles as seen within the Mona Lisa, Madame Le Brun’s paint­ing confirmed the primary white, toothy smile. Jones says it brought on a scandal–smiles like this one had been undig­ni­fied. The one broad smiles seen in Renais­sance paint­ing had been from chil­dren (who didn’t know wager­ter), the “filthy” ple­beians, or the insane. What had hap­pened? Jones cred­its the change to 2 issues: the emer­gence of den­tistry over the pre­vi­ous hun­dred years (includ­ing the inven­tion of the tooth­brush), and the emer­gence of a “cult of sen­si­bil­i­ty and well mannered­ness.” Jones explains this by look­ing on the hero­ines of the 18th cen­tu­ry nov­el, the place a smile meant an open coronary heart, not a sar­cas­tic smirk:

Now, O‑o-dee and Jane Austen’s Emma might need been worlds aside, however so are we–creatures of tech­nol­o­gy, smil­ing at our iPhones as we take anoth­er selfie–from that Kiowan girl within the Fort Sill, Okla­homa stu­dio of George W. Bretz.

Be aware: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this submit appeared on our website in 2020.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Why Nobody Smiles in Old Pho­tos: The Tech­no­log­i­cal & Cul­tur­al Rea­sons Behind All those Black-and-White Frowns

Eerie 19th Cen­tu­ry Pho­tographs of Ghosts: See Images from the Long, Strange Tra­di­tion of “Spir­it Pho­tog­ra­phy”

Vis­it a New Dig­i­tal Archive of 2.2 Mil­lion Images from the First Hun­dred Years of Pho­tog­ra­phy

Arab Pho­tog­ra­phy Archive Puts 22,000 His­toric Images Online: Get a Rare Glimpse into Life and Art in the Arab World

Take a Visu­al Jour­ney Through 181 Years of Street Pho­tog­ra­phy (1838–2019)

Ted Mills is a free­lance author on the humanities who cur­lease­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the professional­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can even fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his movies here.