"Civil War photos: Help sought to solve old mystery" Topic
6 Posts
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Tango01  | 25 Jun 2012 12:35 p.m. PST |
Of possible interest. link All pictures here.
link Amicalement
Armand |
| 79thPA | 25 Jun 2012 1:14 p.m. PST |
I've seen these before. I find the pictures of the girls to be very depressing and a visceral commentary on the real cost of war. |
 Who asked this joker | 25 Jun 2012 1:40 p.m. PST |
Not in these but there is one rather sad picture of a girl holding a picture of her father who had died in combat. In some ways, you can't capture the emotion of the photos because folks rarely smiled for a photograph. These picture may very well be of very happy children but we will never know. They don't smile in the photos and that is the norm. |
 Nashville | 25 Jun 2012 2:29 p.m. PST |
they dont smile because it is difficult to hold the smile for the time needed to expose the plate. ALSO , photographs were substitutes for painted portraits and folks dont smile much in portraits |
| Oddball | 26 Jun 2012 6:39 a.m. PST |
"All the photos in the wallets on the battlefield" – The Clash, "Something About England". The photos of the family and children are a sad reminder of those that are left behind. |
| Terrement | 26 Jun 2012 6:50 a.m. PST |
To a lesser extent, there may also be the issue of dental hygiene. I've been told that even into the Cold War period, many posed "western" pictures have the subjects saying "cheese" because it gives a uniform pseudo-smile and exposes the teeth, while in the USSR, it was far more common to say a word like "raisin" in Russian because it gave them a small mouth / no teeth showing. For good reasons. Folklore? Perhaps – not swearing by it but it sounds reasonable. JJ |
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