Family Life

Nobody smiles in the earliest family photographs, and the usual explanation is only half right. Exposures in the 1840s and 1850s could run many seconds, and holding a smile that long is hard. But the deeper reason is that a portrait was a serious and expensive occasion, and people dressed and posed for it the way they would for church.

Studios kept iron stands with clamps that held a sitter's head still from behind, which is why so many early portraits look stiff. Babies were sometimes held in place by a mother hidden under a dark cloth, and she can occasionally be spotted as a draped shape behind the child. As cameras got faster in the 1880s, and the Kodak put snapshots in amateur hands after 1888, family pictures loosened up. Children play, people laugh, and the setting moves from the studio to the porch and the yard.

Clothing is one of the best ways to date these pictures. Women's dress went from the wide hoop skirts of the 1850s and 1860s to the bustle of the 1870s and 1880s, then to the puffed sleeves of the 1890s and the shirtwaist and long skirt of the Gibson Girl years. Hemlines rose sharply in the 1920s. Men's fashion changed more slowly, but collars, lapels and beards all moved with the times.

Hats deserve their own look. For most of this period almost nobody went out in public without one, men or women, rich or poor. A crowd photograph from 1910 is a sea of hats, and the style of hat told you a good deal about who was under it.

Children are worth a close look too. In the 19th century small boys were often dressed in skirts until they were 4 or 5 years old, so a child in a dress in an old photograph may well be a boy. Family captions written on the back are often the only sure way to tell.