By Nila Kartika Wati 
By the early 1840s, the nascent technology of daguerreotype photography had advanced significantly, shrinking the once-arduous sitting time from a quarter of an hour to less than a minute. This technological leap, driven by faster plates and brighter lenses, made it entirely feasible to capture a pleasant, sustained facial expression without undue strain. Yet, for the ensuing six decades, a striking phenomenon persisted: almost universally, subjects in front of a camera remained stoic, their mouths firmly closed. A glance through any collection of antique portraits, from estate sales to historical archives, reveals a consistent tableau of grave, composed faces, mirroring the seriousness of a passport official rather than the joviality one might expect from a quick sitting.
The prevailing popular narrative often attributes this solemnity to the necessity of remaining rigid for extended periods, suggesting that a forced smile would quickly morph into an uncomfortable grimace. While this explanation holds true for the very earliest photographic experiments of the late 1830s, it fails to account for the decades that followed, when technical limitations had largely been overcome. The widespread adoption of the grinning snapshot, far from being a natural state finally unlocked by technology, is in fact a cultural convention belonging predominantly to the 20th century, a shift engineered by specific individuals and companies.
The Long-Exposure Narrative: A Partial Truth
When Louis Daguerre first unveiled his photographic process to the world in 1839, the chemical plates were indeed agonizingly slow. Exposures often extended to several minutes, even in optimal lighting conditions. This inherent slowness explains why Daguerre’s iconic 1838 view of a Paris boulevard, "Boulevard du Temple," appears eerily empty; only a lone man, standing still to have his boots shined, remained in place long enough to register on the plate. Under such constraints, a portrait was a monumental undertaking, often requiring sitters to use head clamps to maintain absolute stillness. Sustaining a natural, open smile for such an duration was physically impossible and culturally incongruous.
However, this period of extreme technical limitation was remarkably brief. By 1840, just a year after Daguerre’s public announcement, a revolutionary lens design by Josef Petzval dramatically increased light-gathering capabilities. Concurrently, chemical innovations, such as bromine fuming, significantly enhanced plate sensitivity. While Daguerre initially calculated exposures in minutes, within a few short years, commercial portrait studios were operating with exposure times measured in mere seconds. Reducing a sitting to five or ten seconds effectively neutralizes the technical excuse for unsmiling faces. Anyone can hold a genuine smile for ten seconds.
The timeline simply does not align with the enduring myth. Commercial portrait studios proliferated across Europe and America throughout the 1840s and 1850s. By the American Civil War (1861-1865), photographic sittings were fast enough to capture candid expressions. Yet, the unsmiling face persisted through the 1860s, 1870s, 1880s, and all the way to 1900. While exposure length undeniably dictated the frozen faces of 1840, it offers no explanation for the equally composed countenances of 1895, a time when one’s great-grandmother could have easily grinned, and the photographic plate would have captured it cleanly and precisely. The persistence of the somber pose points to deeper, non-technical influences rooted in societal norms and artistic tradition.
Inherited Gravity: Photography’s Debt to Portraiture
The early photographic industry did not invent a new visual language; rather, it largely adopted and adapted the established conventions of three centuries of painted portraiture. Within this venerable artistic tradition, a broad, open smile was far from the norm, often verging on taboo. A tour through any gallery of Old Masters will quickly confirm this, revealing a striking scarcity of grins among the depicted aristocracy, dignitaries, and notable figures.
As art historian Nicholas Jeeves eloquently details in his essay on portraiture, the wide smile carried deeply negative connotations for centuries. It was frequently associated with "the poor, the lewd, the drunk, the innocent, and the entertainment." Respectable individuals, particularly those of status, were expected to maintain a composed, dignified mouth, signaling self-control and decorum. This was not merely an unspoken cultural understanding but was explicitly codified in etiquette guides of the era.
One notable example comes from 1703, when the French priest and educator Jean-Baptiste de La Salle penned a widely influential treatise on Christian decorum. In it, he meticulously described the attributes of a well-mannered mouth, cautioning against individuals who "raise their upper lip so high… that their teeth are almost entirely visible." Such an expression, he asserted, was contrary to good manners. A wide grin was not perceived as friendly or inviting; instead, it was interpreted as a lapse in self-control, an unseemly display of emotion that undermined the very image of composure and seriousness a portrait was intended to convey.
A portrait, whether painted or photographed, functioned as a formal, enduring document of an individual’s identity and social standing. Its primary purpose was to project status, character, and permanence, rather than a fleeting mood or ephemeral joy. Political figures of the time instinctively understood this. Abraham Lincoln, despite his well-known reputation as a gifted storyteller and witty conversationalist, is almost uniformly depicted with a grave expression in his photographic portraits. The gravity conveyed was precisely the point: it underscored his leadership, solemn responsibilities, and the weight of his office.
The celebrated American author Mark Twain, renowned for his humor and love of a good joke, reportedly drew a firm line when it came to photographic sittings. A friend’s memoir quotes him insisting 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." While the precise wording of this quote is difficult to verify, the sentiment perfectly encapsulates the mainstream view of the era. A smile was considered frivolous, and frivolity was certainly not the legacy one wished to bequeath to future generations.
The significant cost associated with commissioning a portrait further reinforced this code of formality. Sitting for a photograph was an expensive and rare event, often a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence for many families. Consequently, people approached it with the same solemnity and careful preparation they would for a commissioned painting. Subjects donned their finest attire, meticulously arranged their posture, and composed a face deemed fit for display on a mantelpiece and inclusion in the permanent family record. In an age where one’s image was a formal declaration, "grinning for the ages" was simply not an acceptable concept.
The Dental Myth: A Convenient but Inaccurate Explanation
A frequently cited, yet largely inaccurate, explanation for the absence of smiles in old photographs posits that people had universally rotten teeth and thus kept their mouths shut out of shame. This theory, while seemingly plausible, fails to withstand closer scrutiny.
It is undeniable that 19th-century dental care was rudimentary and often brutal. Anesthetic dentistry was in its infancy, fillings were available but often beyond the financial reach of the common person, and the most prevalent solution for a troublesome tooth was extraction. This reality meant that poor oral hygiene, missing teeth, and dental discomfort were indeed widespread across all social classes.
However, this widespread prevalence of dental issues actually undermines, rather than supports, the "bad teeth" theory as the primary driver for the lack of smiles in photographs. If poor dentition were the decisive factor, it would have equally affected everyone, rendering it incapable of explaining why one group of people (pre-20th century subjects) refrained from smiling while another (post-Kodak era) embraced it. Everyone, from the highest echelons of society to the working class, was largely in the same "dental boat." Britain’s Lord Palmerston, for instance, served as prime minister into his eighties, despite reportedly having several missing teeth, and was still widely regarded as a charming and charismatic figure. If poor dentition truly silenced the smile, it would have silenced all equally, and the timing of the "great grinning shift" would look entirely different. While rotten teeth were a harsh reality of the era, they were not the causal mechanism behind the photographic convention of the unsmiling face. The explanation lies instead in cultural perceptions of beauty, decorum, and self-presentation.
The Kodak Revolution: Marketing Joy and Democratizing the Lens
The true catalyst for the transformation of the photographic face was not a chemical breakthrough or a dental advancement, but rather a profound shift in marketing strategy and the democratization of the camera, spearheaded by one company: Eastman Kodak.
George Eastman, Kodak’s founder, harbored a revolutionary vision: to put photography into the hands of ordinary people. His first Kodak camera, introduced in 1888, was accompanied by the now-iconic slogan, "You press the button, we do the rest." This marked a radical departure from the complex, cumbersome photographic processes that required technical expertise. The real game-changer, however, arrived in 1900 with the Brownie camera. Priced at a mere one dollar, it was cheap enough to be an accessible novelty, even for a child. Kodak’s initial success was phenomenal, shipping over 150,000 Brownies in its inaugural year.
This dramatic price collapse and simplification of the photographic process fundamentally altered the camera’s place in society. It moved photography out of the formal, often intimidating studio environment and into the informal realms of the backyard, the beach, and the family vacation. The act of taking a photograph ceased to be a solemn, expensive appointment and evolved into a casual, spontaneous activity undertaken on a "good day."
What exactly constituted a "good day" and how one should behave on it became the focus of Kodak’s multi-decade advertising campaigns. The media scholar Christina Kotchemidova has meticulously traced the deliberate nature of this marketing push. Eastman Kodak strategically owned or bankrolled a significant portion of the photographic trade press, allowing it to exert considerable influence over the prevailing standards of what constituted a "good" picture. Its advertising relentlessly forged a powerful associative link between the camera and themes of leisure, happiness, and joy. Slogans were crafted to directly sell the mood: "Vacation days are Kodak days," and "Save your happy moments with a Kodak."
From the 1890s onward, the ubiquitous "Kodak Girl" became a powerful cultural icon. Depicted as a young woman traveling, playing, and sightseeing without a care in the world, she modeled the entire Kodak program. She embodied freedom, modernity, and, crucially, a carefree happiness that demanded a smiling face. The historian Nancy Martha West has described how these advertisements effectively sold photography as a means to construct a personal album devoid of sadness, a curated life history edited down to holidays and smiles. The underlying message was clear: if the camera’s purpose was to capture fun, then the face presented to its lens must be a happy one.
The Broader Cultural Echo: Hollywood and the American Smile
Kodak’s marketing efforts were not an isolated phenomenon; they were amplified and reinforced by broader cultural currents, most notably the burgeoning influence of Hollywood. In the early 20th century, movie stars began beaming from the silver screen and gracing magazine covers, their wide smiles becoming synonymous with glamour, success, and aspirational living. This new visual lexicon taught an entire culture to associate white teeth and a broad, confident smile with health, vitality, and upward mobility. The burgeoning advertising industry, across various sectors from toothpaste to fashion, quickly absorbed and propagated this lesson.
The stern, formal portrait of the 19th century had been primarily about conveying who you were – your status, character, and gravitas. The 20th-century snapshot, in contrast, became increasingly about how good a time you were having – your leisure, joy, and personal happiness. These two distinct photographic purposes inherently demanded different facial expressions. The "American smile," characterized by its openness and display of teeth, thus became a cultural emblem, signifying optimism, friendliness, and a particular kind of public persona.
From "Prunes" to "Cheese": A Linguistic Mirror
The profound cultural reversal in photographic norms can be distinctly heard in a single, simple linguistic shift. Victorian portrait studios, aiming to achieve that small, controlled, and decorous mouth admired by the era’s etiquette, are widely believed to have instructed sitters to say "prunes." This simple command naturally purses the lips into precisely the tight, oval shape that was then considered appropriate.
The modern instruction, conversely, achieves the exact opposite effect. The ubiquitous command to "say cheese" concludes on a long "ee" sound that invariably pulls the corners of the mouth wide and often bares the teeth, effectively manufacturing something akin to a grin on cue. The very prompt itself flipped from a technique designed to suppress the smile to one engineered to produce it.
The precise origin of "say cheese" remains somewhat anecdotal. The earliest print reference researchers have definitively identified appeared in a Texas newspaper, the Big Spring Herald, in 1943. The article presented the tip under the headline "Just say ‘Cheese,’ It’s an automatic smile," attributing the formula to former ambassador Joseph E. Davies, who in turn credited an unnamed politician. Whether this unnamed politician was Franklin Roosevelt or if the phrase was already circulating in popular culture is not definitively known, and honest historical accounts acknowledge this ambiguity. What is clear, however, is that by the 1940s, the trick was common enough to be printed as widely accepted folk wisdom, signaling its firm entrenchment in popular culture.
Empirical Evidence and the Enduring Performance
The measurable impact of this cultural transformation is strikingly evident in empirical data. Researchers behind a comprehensive Berkeley study analyzed nearly 38,000 American high school yearbook portraits spanning from 1905 to the 2010s, utilizing specialized software to score the degree of smiling in each face. The resulting curve illustrates a steady, unmistakable climb: smiles become progressively more prevalent, rising consistently from the stiff-faced early 1900s, through the middle of the century, and continuing its ascent into the present day. This same dataset also revealed a smaller, yet persistent, pattern that holds true across the decades: women consistently display more smiles in their photographs than men do, suggesting the interplay of broader cultural shifts with enduring gendered expectations. The widespread grin, therefore, did not arrive as an instantaneous cultural decree but spread gradually, decade by decade, precisely as a successfully marketed and socially adopted habit would.
Understanding this rich history, however, does not make it easy to simply "switch off" the ingrained habit of smiling for the camera. Any photographer attempting to elicit a truly unforced, natural expression from a nervous subject quickly learns that the command "say cheese" often produces a strained, artificial rictus rather than genuine joy. This is precisely why professional portrait photographers meticulously study the subtle differences between a manufactured grin and an authentic smile, a subject explored in depth in courses like Peter Hurley’s renowned headshot training. A century of concerted advertising and cultural conditioning trained an entire populace to grin for the lens, but it never taught anyone to truly mean it on cue.
So, the next time you raise a phone or camera and instinctively prompt a group to "say cheese," recognize that you are enacting a script, one largely written by a pioneering camera company and subsequently reinforced by powerful cultural forces. The stern strangers gazing out from those antique-shop frames were not inherently sadder than us, nor were they less adept at navigating life, nor were they merely concealing unsightly teeth. They were simply adhering to a different set of societal rules, rules that dictated a face fixed forever should project seriousness, dignity, and gravitas. Our contemporary rules, in stark contrast, suggest that a photographic face should convey happiness, fun, and approachability. Both expressions are, fundamentally, performances—but only one of them was meticulously crafted and sold to us as the default.
