PROVO, Utah — Diane VanSkiver Gagel began her class at BYU's Conference on Family History and Genealogy on Tuesday, July 27, by asking everyone to sit still for one minute. "Don't move a muscle!" she said.
After what seemed like five minutes, she told everyone they could move again.
This is why people in old photographs do not smile, she said. The first daguerreotypes required people to sit still for 15 minutes. As technology improved, the wait went down. Even in shorter waiting times, if a person smiled, the photograph would be blurred because nobody could hold a smile that long.
Another reason they may not be smiling, Gagel said, is because of the contraptions that held them in place. Studios often had claws that clamped onto heads to hold them still. Sometimes you can see the stand holding the claw.
Children were a bigger problem. One photograph Gagel showed had a child sitting on a blanket — a blanket draped over the mother who is holding him still.
By the way, Gagel said that if you see an old photograph of a mother holding a sleeping child, that child isn't sleeping. He or she is dead. With the initial novelty and expense of photographs, many children would die before a photo could be taken. The photographer would be called right away to make a remembrance for the grieving family. One time a family even dug up a dead family member when they heard a photographer was coming to town.
The most common complaints early photographers heard were about the lack of color. Most people were familiar with painted portraits — and so the new-fangled black and white photographs looked strange to them. So often they were overpainted — sometimes expertly, and sometimes hideously.
Gagel spoke on the various ways to date the time these unsmiling people and their photographs. The details of her message are found in her book "Windows on the Past: Identifying and Dating 19th Century Photographs" available on amazon.com or www.heritagebooks.com.
The type of photograph is the first clue. Daguerreotypes have a mirror-like quality and were made from 1840 to about 1860. They were placed in wood and leather cases or box-like frames.
Ambrotypes are an image on clear glass with a black piece of paper (or black paint) behind them to bring out the details. They were popular from 1851 to 1880. They were also in cases.
Tintypes (also known as ferrotypes or melainotypes) were made out of iron, not tin. They are sometimes found in the same types of cases as Ambrotypes. The easy way to tell the difference is by weight (Ambrotypes have a lot of glass and are heavier) or by using a magnet (a magnet is attracted to iron, not glass). Tintypes are used from 1853 all the way into the 1930s.
Paper photographs can also be dated by their type.
Carte de visite or photographs the size of calling cards were the rage from 1854 to 1885.
Cabinet Cards were similar but larger and used from 1869 to 1920. The nice thing about these cards is they usually had the photographer's name and address on the front or back. There are directories of photographers online and also city directories. Gagel said that photographers moved around a lot, so dating a Cabinet Card from the photographer's address is sometimes easy. Gagel said that this information, and the written information on photographs is also why if you ever want someone to make a copy of an old photograph you should ask for a copy of the front and the back.
Salt Prints are more rare, but have colors like sepia, brown or purple. They are not shiny and were used from 1850 to 1860 and in the 1880s.
Albumen prints are the most common and easily identified by their shiny surfaces. The gloss comes from egg whites used in the process. They were used over a wide time period.
Woodburytypes were used 1865 to 1890s and are tinted red. Cyanotypes were from 1885 to 1910 and tinted blue.
Other things to look at in dating photographs include props, backgrounds, furniture and clothing.
Gagel went in detail over the different decades from the 1840s to the 1890s and the types of clothing. She said to notice things like lapel size, which button on a jacket was buttoned, where the hair was parted, what types of patterns are on the socks, where the woman's waist is, whether the skirts have hoops, if the dress has fringes, what hats were worn, the types of collars, the type of facial hair (on the men), sleeve size, gloves, bangs, bustles, bodices and bowlers.
Each decade had its fashion. She said there are many resources online to search to find the fashions from different times.
Knowing about the fashions can also prevent hasty conclusions. For example. Boys would wear dresses while they were toddlers. Unless you knew that girls parted their hair in the middle and boys on the side, poor great-grandpa might be identified as great-grandma.
BYU's Conference on Family History and Genealogy continues through Friday. For more information go to familyhistoryconferences.byu.edu.