Have you ever eaten at Cracker Barrel and noticed all the old pictures hanging on their walls? Those stern ancestors of some family that didn’t care enough to keep their pictures? They are always large framed photographs. Poster sized. No small eight by ten photos for them. The men nearly always have long beards and look like the father or grandfather you wouldn’t want to disobey. The women generally have long hair and are dressed to the nines. Even the babies or young children will be dressed in their finest. But shoes might be optional.
This picture is my great grandmother and my grandmother and her sister. I think the baby is my grandmother. I think. My sister who keeps up with the family tree and actually has this framed picture hanging in her entrance way has told me which she is, but I don’t remember for sure. I should have made a note.
You might notice something else about this picture and all those old pictures of people from the 1800s. Can you put your finger on it? Nobody is smiling. People in old-timey photos look as if they think their faces might break if they smile. Nobody is telling anybody to say cheese to produce a smiling look or making funny faces to get a smile out of the people in front of the camera. Smiles were not wanted back then.
It wasn’t just a matter of long exposure times and tired facial muscles. Having your picture taken used to be an event reserved only for the most special of occasions, and you were lucky if it happened more than once in your lifetime. So you had to make it count. People wanted to be remembered as profound, stern-looking individuals lost in thought. Our ancestors believed smiling in photographs was about the most embarrassing thing you could do. Oh, maybe you could get away with a faint curvature of the lips, but grinning or showing your teeth would inevitably leave you remembered as a hopeless fool.
Even a humor writer like Mark Twain, who wrote books and articles to make readers smile, looked dead serious in his every picture. He once wrote to The Sacramento Daily Union that “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.”
Imagine his horror if you could take your phone with its thousands of smiling photos back to Twain’s time to show him your selfies! We do love our smiles and the smiles of our family and friends as we snap picture after picture. I especially like capturing a few smiles of my grandchildren and how could I not smile along with them in a selfie or two. 
To smile or not to smile, that is the question. One that makes me smile every time.
Do you like to smile in pictures? Think you need to take another picture if your kids or grandkids forget to smile?
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I like to smile in photos that I am in. Hubby doesn’t like “posed” photos, he’d take a great old fashioned photo. We always take duplicates for all photos we take. Never know when there will be a camera or user malfunction. lol
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Isn’t it great to have so many options for snapping pictures and capturing memories, Tina? With digital you don’t have to worry about getting bad pictures. You can always delete and try again. It’s usually use malfunction when my pictures aren’t good. LOL.
Good post, Ann! During my seasonal tourism job I get asked quite often why no one is smiling in the old photographs hung throughout the log cabin. Now I can tell them why.
I used to try to get posed pictures of the family. But now, with 10 grands I just snap away. And I usually capture their unique personalities. I have 2 grandsons that consider it uncool to smile politely….it’s either no smile at all or the goofiest smile ever. And there’s nearly always “rabbit ears” somewhere. I wonder when that age-old trick of fingers behind the head originated?
Have a blessed Thanksgiving week everyone. Even in these “no word to describe” days, we still have many blessings to count.
Author
Oh yes, so many blessings, Lavon. I’ve heard various reasons given for the somber looks on faces in old photographs from that long exposure time to bad teeth. But Mark Twain cleared all that up with his quote and you don’t find a picture of him smiling from young age to white hair time like the picture I added to the post.
My grandkids are the same way. They have the photo smile or the goofy look in a lot of the pictures. But as you say, with all the pictures we can take, we do capture some good ones. Even those rabbit ear ones. I almost used one of those in my post this time. 🙂
I really enjoyed the pictures of you and your grands. How nice to see their smiles.
I remember seeing very old photographs of people in coffins even. Of course smiles were missing but it is fun to share your happiness with others with a good smile. Especially right now when everything seems so -I am trying to think of just the right word to describe our world right now but words escape me. I hope we can get back to a more normal lifestyle especially for our children and grandchildren. How sad to be going through this.
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I’m with you, Elaine, in hoping that next year things get better for everyone. My granddaughter was a high school senior last spring and missed out on so much that is usually a part of graduating.
My dad asked me to take pictures of my grandfather in his coffin. I was sixteen at the time and it was sort of weird taking those photos. Of course it was a film camera and we had to wait for the film to be developed. I do have some pictures of my grandfather while he was still living too.
I used to take a lot of photographs with the old fashioned kind of camera (not the one on my iphone) and always preferred a posed photo with pleasant looks on faces rather than wasting my money getting unusable photos developed. Now with my iphone, I can easily take multiples if one or more don’t turn out well. However, I still prefer smiles.
Author
I too prefer smiles, Suzanne. Love it when I capture a photo of the grandkids that show them having a good time. But I do have a few pictures that aren’t quite as sunny too. That can be fun in a different kind of way.
Taking pictures was much different in the film and developing days before digital took over. You couldn’t just snap pictures willy-nilly. Things could get expensive fast. Now nearly everybody has a camera in their pocket and can take pictures of the craziest things. Count me in that number. I love sharing photos with people on Facebook of cows and dogs and well, whatever catches my eye.
I like to appear friendly and smiling comes natural for me. My smile is likely my best feature and I try to make sure it is reflected in my eyes. Receiving a nice smile from someone else is like a personal gift. Over the years, I have been known to smile through tears and actually fool people into thinking I am okay. That makes me feel a bit fake because I like for my smile to be heartfelt.
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I love smiling too and I miss seeing others’ smiles with all the masks, Sandra. I do understand that the masks are necessary, but believe you me, I’m going to be happy when we get to lay them aside when they are no longer needed.
I hope you have many more times when your smile is genuine and things are okay than those times when you’re smiling to hide tears.
I think the younger generation has gone back to the no smiling in pictures. My grandkids have lots of senior pictures with a serious look. Grandma likes smiles!
Author
This grandma likes smiles too, Joan. I guess it’s fun for the young people today to try some different looks. Most of them take a bunch of poses. So maybe we can grab one of the smiling ones.