Ever wonder why people in the 19th-century didn’t smile for photographs? It is often believed that it was difficult for people to hold a smile for as long as it took to take a  picture in photography’s early days. However, by the 1850s, a photo was able to be taken within ten seconds so this belief doesn’t hold
support. So what is the reason why people didn’t smile? The real reason has to do with the culture at the time.   Going to a professional photographer was expensive and most people could only afford to have one photo taken in a lifetime. That person did not want to be captured for all eternity with a smile. This was carried over from the days of painted portraits which was how fools and drunks were portrayed. People believed if they smiled for a photo, they would be preserved in time and remembered as a fool.
Abraham Lincoln was known as a humorous man by those who knew him. However, we think of him as always serious, as he never smiled
for photos. Same thing with Mark Twain, who wrote, “A photograph is a most important document, and there is nothing more
damning to go down to posterity than a silly, foolish smile caught and fixed forever.