Serious business of old-time photos meant most didn't smile

"Why didn't anybody smile in really old pictures?" asked Annie Farrugia, 10, a fifth-grader at Libertyville's Butterfield School.

In the 1870s, having a picture taken at a photographer's studio was a very special occasion. "It was truly a luxury item for most," said Rob Medina, rights and reproduction coordinator at the Chicago History Museum.

"The experience was a serious one, recording a moment for posterity. One wanted to appear as stoic as possible as it may be their only picture ever taken," Medina said. "It was also considered frivolous by some to smile and not appear serious in a photograph since it was regarded as a very special occasion, and one wore their Sunday best."

The camera used to make these old-time photos was very large and cumbersome.

"Very large format cameras were used that had 8- by-10-inch glass plate negatives, which had to be changed with each shot," Medina said. Exposure time, the time it took for the light to pierce through the camera lens and reflect onto the negative, was seconds long, not the quick click we experience today.

The Chicago History Museum Prints and Photographs Department counts more than 2 million photos and negatives in its collection, including the picture of this well-dressed family taken in Chicago sometime between the 1870s and 1890s.

The photographer's name, Wm. Neidhardt, and his address on Milwaukee Avenue in Chicago, are prominently featured on the photo. Unfortunately, the family's name isn't, and the museum had no knowledge of who is featured in the portrait.

Called a "cabinet card," the black-and-white picture was taken using a 4¼-by-6½-inch glass plate -- the same size as the finished photo. The prints were so delicate that they could easily curl up at the edges. Photographers protected them by mounting them on card stock. Empty space on the card was decorated with the photographer's name or border art.

Cabinet cards were very popular. People would prop these portraits and pictures of loved ones on top of living room cabinets or bookcases for all their guests to see. This type of photo was widely used through the end of the 1800s.

In the early 1900s, people wanted newer and better technology. As cameras became affordable and easy to use, the subject matter for the photograph became less formal. People began taking outdoor shots and candid snaps of their subjects using their new Kodak "Brownie" cameras.

"Folks probably started to relax when photo taking became a little more portable and easier, in the 1900s, the teens and on. By the 1930s many folks could afford to carry their own cameras with the latest higher speed flexible film. This led to relaxation and spontaneity in picture taking," Medina said.