It’s a strange phenomenon that saying the name of a dairy product would trigger people to smile. When did the first photographer decide to utter this word in order to produce a smile on the faces of his subjects? The answer to this question is unclear; however we can examine the history of ‘smiling for the camera’ to find out more.
Why do we smile in photographs? It just makes sense somehow, doesn’t it? You almost can’t smile when someone says cheese. According to TodayIFoundOut.com, the phrase “say cheese” first appeared in The Big Spring Herald in 1943. The news snippet quotes former Ambassador Joseph E. Davies, who shares with the reporter a formula he learned for smiling when your picture is about to be taken:
“It’s simple. Just say “Cheese,” It’s an automatic smile. “I learned that from a politician,” Mr. Davies chuckled. “An astute politician, a very great politician. But, of course, I cannot tell you who he was…”
The politician being referred to is assumed to be Professor Franklin D. Roosevelt, in which case FDR would be the genius being “say cheese,” yet there is no evidence of this. But let’s return to the question of why we smile in photographs to begin with. To be honest, smiling for a photograph is an American 20th-century concept. If you look at a photograph from the Victorian age, you’ll notice stony, serious faces, as it was considered beautiful to have a “small, tightly controlled smile.” In order to achieve this affect, photographers would ask their subjects to say ‘prunes’ instead of ‘cheese.’
Getting a portrait taken was very expensive at the time and limited to the upper class. A photography session took a long time as well, even after the daguerreotype was invented in 1839 and exposure time was sped up to 15 minutes. This still was too lengthy an amount of time to ask subjects to hold a smile without tiring out. It was a big production treated with seriousness, and so the mood often would not lend to smiling. “Smiles during this time were typically captured on children, peasants, and drunks,” according to TodayIFoundOut.com.
But the biggest reason people didn’t smile in the Victorian era was due to — you guessed it — poor oral hygiene! Dental care was still not widely available in the 1800s, even amongst the rich. If someone had tooth pain or a broken tooth, the answer would often be to yank it out. Thus if you were going to have a photograph taken and were missing some teeth, you probably wouldn’t want to smile.
At the turn of the century, Kodak introduced the $1 Brownie camera in 1900. Accessibility to photography spread like wildfire throughout America, and soon anyone and everyone was able to take a photograph. Kodak’s slogan at the time was: “You push the button, we do the rest.” They advertised their cameras “with photographs of smiling faces.” Soonafter, because taking photographs became so commonplace, the advent of casual photography lent to a culture where smiling became more appropriate. (Mentalfloss).
Today, nearly 3,500 photographs are uploaded to Facebook per second. People don’t think twice about whipping out their smartphones to photograph daily aspects of life. Now that’s casual photography.
Dr. Mike Malone and his team practice expert cosmetic dentistry in Lafayette, LA. Dr. Malone is the former president and current accredited member of the American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry. He is also the official Cosmetic Dentist of the Miss Louisiana USA and Miss Louisiana Teen USA pageants. Check out his website for more information.