Understanding Old Photographs

Interpretations vs. Facts

by Joelle Steele

I love antique photography. I enjoy seeing what things used to look like, how people dressed, etc. So I follow several vintage photography pages and groups on Facebook to expand my view of the kinds of people, places, and things that the photographer’s lens has captured since 1839, when photography was first introduced. I see something new every single day. But I am more than just a little tired of reading the comments that are generated on these photographic posts.

Yes, I know, I could just ignore the comments, but I don’t like to see misinformation transmitted across the social media universe in the form of interpretations rather than actual facts. How many times have I seen comments about how people looked so sad or angry back then, or that person is dead, or everyone is always wearing black, or those kids were abused, or black-and-white photos are cold and lifeless, etc.

They looked sad? Nobody smiled back then? Emotions are hard to verify in old photos. Some people did smile in old photos. But many people simply had bad or missing teeth and didn’t want to display them for posterity. Tooth loss in the 1900s was pretty high, and without proper dental hygiene many people in the 1800s were missing more than half their teeth by the time they were 35-40 years old, including wealthy people. In fact, the standard for beauty in the 1800s was if a person still had most of their teeth and a minimal number of pock marks on their face. But it wasn’t just about teeth. Most people were not used to having their photographs taken back in the 1800s. In some cases they may have had their photograph taken only once in their life when they went to a city where there was a photography studio. And some weren’t even used to the idea of photography as late as the 1920s. It depended on the person and where they lived. Photography took awhile to gain popularity in rural America. In the earliest days of photography the exposure time could be quite lengthy, often up to 15 minutes. Later it dropped to 20-30 seconds, but it’s still very hard to remain completely still for that long in order to avoid ending up with a blurry photo. And it’s especially difficult to not blink and hold a smile that long.

That person is dead? Yes, the Victorians did have a thing about photographing their dead, but to read comments about old photos you’d think every person who looks like they weren’t sitting up completely straight, or whose eyes looked blurry, or who was held in a device called a “posing stand” was dead. See the last paragraph. Sitting still was not easy for everyone. Babies and young children were not necessarily dead just because their eyes were blurry. Try to keep any child still for 20-30 seconds, let alone 15 minutes. Adults in posing stands was common and helped them stay still. But dead adults and even dead children could never be supported by something as flimsy as a posing stand. And, if you had ever seen a dead person who was not yet embalmed, you would know that dead people don’t look at all like they did when they were alive. Within just a few minutes after their death, all their facial (and body) muscles go limp and droop and they take on a bloated look that worsens within a couple hour’s time. I won’t even tell you what embalmers do to make them look good in a casket.

People wore black a lot? They were always in mourning? Maybe some were wearing black, and maybe some of them were in mourning. But most of the earliest photographs were very high contrast, meaning what was dark became darker, and what was light became lighter. A woman wore a medium-green dress, but in her photograph it looked black. And that contrast was not limited to clothing. People with light skin often looked very white, while darker skinned people often looked much darker than they really were. In some cases it wasn’t until many years later that the more modern cameras captured their true skin tones.

Black and white photos are lifeless. Well, that’s just someone’s opinion. Colorizing black-and-white photos does not make them any more life-like. Colorizing a photo is not even necessarily historically accurate, since colorization is mostly pure guesswork, both in terms of clothing and skin tones. Black and white photography has a distinct advantage over color: it forces the viewer to concentrate on the subject matter without the distraction of color. And, personally, I think black-and-white photos have an elegance to them. If someone were to colorize my black-and-white photos I would consider it an insult to my art.

Those children were abused? Are you sure about that? It’s true that both child and adult laborers were often victims of very unsafe and low-paying workplaces such as mines and factories. But a child working is not abuse. Children have worked for centuries when most kids learned to help with certain tasks around the house, farm, or store when they were still toddlers. I grew up in the 1950s, and I learned to put my toys away and put dirty clothes in the hamper by the time I was 4. I made my own lunch to take to school when I was 7. I ironed sheets (no permanent press back in the day) by the time I was 8. I took two buses to get to Saturday art classes at age 9. I delivered prescriptions for my godfather’s drugstore at the same time I started working in my parent’s office doing light bookkeeping at age 10. I did not suffer from any of this. I still went to school and played, and most of my friends and family members worked as kids too, especially those who grew up in farm country.

He’s an old pervert marrying that 16 year-old girl? If you think that, you probably don’t know anything about genealogy. Women are at their most fertile between the ages of 16 and 24. Many men did not marry until their mid-thirties or later because they could not afford to have a wife, which led to a family because reliable birth control was almost non-existent. Women often continued to have children well into their 40s when their youngest daughters were also having children. Childbirth was a frequent cause of a wife’s death, which left her husband to tend a farm or work a job and take care of little kids. There was a need to remarry, and to remarry quickly. With big families, parents wanted their daughters to marry someone who could provide for them. Daughters were not the asset to poor people and farmers that sons were. But, at 16, girls were women. They were mature, capable, trained, and prepared to be wives and mothers. Their own fathers were likely a lot older than their mothers. They weren’t forced to marry the first old guy who came along, but marrying an older man was often the best choice.

So, what does all this mean? It means that you can’t interpret history from a photograph unless you know the facts. And even then, you will never know the entire story because you weren’t there, and the world was a very, very different place. What something looks like in a photograph is not necessarily a reflection of what it really was. And you can’t judge the way people lived long ago by today’s standards which don’t even apply to the same situation. Just enjoy an old photograph for what it is: a peek at faces from the past.