Rare photo of someone smiling in the 19th century, 1894, Oklahoma
4 years ago by dududu · 700 Likes · 8 comments · Popular
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snowbeast
· 4 years ago
· FIRST
Captivating photo. Do you know any backstory? Not a good time to be a Native American in Oklahoma.
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carbontech
· 4 years ago
Rare, for a number of reasons. Smiling wasn't an instinctive response to a photo being taken, the way it now. That only started becoming common in the 1930's.Then there's the dental care of the period-lots of missing or bad teeth and finally, the longer exposures made holding a natural looking smile somewhat problematic. Glad she didn't know these reasons, lol, she looks great.
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Edited 4 years ago
married_dude
· 4 years ago
Another reason you don't see many smiles was you had to hold your facial expression for a certain amount of time or the picture would be blurry, and smiles can be kind of hard to hold for that long.
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carbontech
· 4 years ago
I wish I said exactly that, lol.
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purplepumpkin
· 4 years ago
If I may add, the reason it wasn't common was that people wanted to look all dignified and serious, but when non-European and non-"new Americans" were shot they didn't see things the same way and most wanted their happiness to be remembered.
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cakelover
· 4 years ago
Smiling was invented in 1891 when Mr Happy invented serotonin
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mialinay
· 4 years ago
Still mad that he didn't make his invention available to everyone, would've loved some
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liger79
· 4 years ago
A million ways to die in the west
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