YOU’D BE SO MUCH PRETTIER IF YOU SMILED

By MICHAEL PERKINS

ONE OF THE THINGS THAT MOST CONSISTENTLY MARKS THE EARLIEST PHOTOGRAPHIC PORTRAITS is the uniformly dour expressions on the subjects’ faces. People sitting to “have their picture made” in the 1800’s and early 1900’s express many things….gravity, intensity, purpose, discipline, but generally nothing that indicates any joy at undergoing the process. Much of this, we understand now, was due to the technical limits of cameras and recording media at the time, which dictated long exposure times, meaning that a flat expression was simply easier to hold than a happy one. Any technique which necessitates resting your head against a rigid rod in order to keep it stationary is not conducive to goofy grins.

But what else made early photo portraits seem so stern? I have heard that the very act of smiling in public in the 19th century was, in the minds of some, an indication that one was not serious-minded, even a bit of an idiot. And then there was the fact that, for some, the act of having a photograph made of oneself was the one and only time their life that their identity would be officially recorded. This was not a casual or everyday occurrence, then, but an occasion….not dissimilar to the portraits of great men who posed on and off for months for painters for their one shot at immortality.

Now jump forward to our time, when photography is an instantaneous thing, and the default for facial expression has gone to the other end of the scale, meaning that we don’t even have to be told to “smile for the camera”, since it’s such an ingrained, instinctual thing. Of course, we’ re delighted to be here, happy to pose for a picture. We’re actually scorned a bit when someone points out that we didn’t smile. But where is the best middle-ground for a portrait pose, given that we now have thousands of opportunities to present ourselves over a lifetime?

I have done a lot of self-portraiture in my day, and not because I particularly like the experience. On the contrary, I keep taking additional cracks at the task because I seem, always, to be getting something wrong. For one thing, in anticipating the click, I simply cannot bring off a plausible smile, as the idea of pretending that I’m giddy with joy in the moment seems stupid to me. And so I wind up with many, many frames in which I appear to be everything from mildly annoyed to moody and withdrawn to outright pissed, rather than “austere” or “serious” as I’d rather appear. It occurs to me that I seem to pose for selfies with a 19th century mindset, as if I will never be photographed again, as if I’m making a document of myself. What version of me should be authentic, most official? And why, when I labor so hard to nail candid work directed at anyone else, do I force myself to overthink the making of my own image?

At the end of the day, it’s just easier, and a lot less stressful, to head outdoors and snap a sunset. I won’t make the ultimate statement doing that, either, but it gets me off the hot seat. As the cartoonist Bruce Erik Kaplan captioned in one of his drawings, “I just don’t want to end up being me…..”