It's actually nice to see people smiling in these old photos. Something that was absent in posed photos of those days.
Also: Indeed, very nice to see people smiling in that time! I wonder how much the grim-looking portraits we know add to the cliche of hard-ship and sadness we have of earlier times.
Then, having to look that way when being portrayed may stemmed from who were the earliest people being portrayed: Saints, Kings and Queens.
That certainly might have contributed to the lack of smiling, yes. From sources I have long since lost, it is my understanding that portraits were expensive, and photographs were serious business. Add to that the fact of...umm, why do we smile for photographs again? I do it because everyone else does. Build a time machine, and someone from the 1800s is going to ask, "why does everyone in your photographs look like a smiling idiot? Was there a rash of some brain-eating disease in your time?" I've also heard the theory based on exposure times, but by the very late 1800s exposure times had dropped dramatically. Though it could be argued that not smiling was a carry-over from the days of long exposure. Again, though, documentation I've seen simply said, "that's just how it was done".
Fashions change, just like we don't wear corsets anymore (well, I don't; but I don't judge), now we smile for pictures.
Presumably photographic portraits were done in the style of painted portraits.
Despite any documentation, I think it's just a matter of asking for an answer to a negative action. "Why didn't you smile for your photographs back then?"
"Same reason we didn't do a handstand: why would we?"
Sometimes I fantasize about just greeting everybody I come across to add some friendliness to the world, until I realize that most people, in an urban setting, would probably be utterly bewildered and confused by such a behavior.
It's sad how urban living seems to have conditioned us to treat every other human as a total stranger from whom we should keep the furthest possible distance, physically and emotionally.
The candidness of these photos is interesting because the people look so natural. It's not just the smiling, it's the casual, natural looking poses and expressions, only about half of which are actually smiling. They look actual real life people so to speak.
https://archive.org/details/StrandMagazine13
Scanned PDF has almost 300 MB, but its text description says:
The accompanying picture shows what can be done with snow, by those who care to exercise their powers of modelling, and produce something more natural in appearance than the familiar old " Snow Man," built up after the figure of a Lowther Arcade Noah. During a lull in the severe frosts of last winter, two ladies (amateurs, who had never had a lesson in modelling), with the assistance of only a shovel and pair of scissors, erected and modelled the " Snow Lady" in a garden near Pangbourne. No foundation of any kind was used, and no sticks or wires were concealed under the figure for the purpose of supporting head, body, or arms. An enlargement of the original photograph was shown at the Photographic Exhibition during last autumn, and gave rise to many remarks, sage and otherwise. A large number of those who looked at it pronounced it as " No doubt very cleverly got up — but all humbug ! " " Real snow ? Not a bit of it ! Quite impossible ! "
I found it via TinEye at
If you look at pictures taken in public places as late as the 1950s then almost everyone is wearing a hat.
I wonder if they assumed that they should try to look as they would for a painted portrait.