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August 1908. "Noon hour in an Indianapolis furniture factory. Witness, E.N. Clopper." View full size. Photo and caption by Lewis Wickes Hine.
How fast were the films or plates that these photographers used? I'd always heard that folks tended not to smile because it was tough to hold it convincingly for long enough to make the exposure. Any truth to that?
[Probably more true for the days of the daguerreotype in the 19th century, when chairs in portrait studios had neck braces to keep the subjects' heads from moving. Lewis Hine, in the captions he wrote for these photographs, noted that his younger subjects often tended to be wary, worried that they might get in trouble with bosses or parents, or lose their jobs. - Dave]
It's far from frequent to see smiling faces in any portraits of the period. Photography was still a serious business for people; even in portraits of that time it was far from obligatory to smile.
Notsotricky, it is rare to find a smiling face in photographs by Lewis Wickes Hines in this period. Every tenement apartment is filthy, every parent of a child worker shown is neglectful and usually a drunkard, and every child labourer has the stare of someone who has seen too much war.
I've been looking at your blog for a while now and I was just wondering, was anyone ever happy before 1941?
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