When Joseph-Nicephore Niepce took the first photograph in 1828, his photographic plate required an exposure of eight hours. That exposure time was drastically reduced across the course of the nineteenth century, so that by the 1890s the Collodion process had cut exposure times to two or three seconds.
Nevertheless, a three second exposure meant that subjects had to stand very still to avoid being blurred, and holding a smile for that period was tricky. As a result, we have a tendency to see our Victorian ancestors as even more formal and stern than they might have been.
These pictures are drawn from the Flickr group “The Smiling Victorian” and show a perhaps surprising side to the people who’s “now” was a hundred years before our own.
This semester college work - The Merchant of Venice
The guys in the middle - Antonio and Bassanio, forever together xDD
THE MERCHANT OF VENICE WAS OUR PLAY FOR JUNIOR CERT AND I LOVE GRATIANO AND BASSANIO WITH ALL MY HEART.
Little known fact about me. I consider myself agnostic, but I have this strange, undeniable fascination with religious art. It might be because I see it as morbid and a little fucked up…and well I’m known to like some morbid shit…..(and be a little fucked up)In a field near the north of Sialuliai in Lithuania, millions of crucifixes and icons are packed tight together. According to an old saying, the first crucifix was placed there by a father, who wanted to pray to God for his gravely ill daughter. The father wandered with his cross to the hill. He raised it at the highest point and asked God for forgiveness and to make his daughter well again. After his prayers he returned home and found to his astonishment and thankfulness that his daughter had been cured by a miracle. People now started pilgrimming to the hill. Always with some kind of a crucifix or icon in their hands. This act was dedicated to God.
From photographer Daniel Roos’ note.
For more on Lithuania’s distinctive crosses, check out this post.
