American Society and the Democratic Portrait

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The simple portrait dominated American photography, just as it had dominated American painting during the two preceding centuries. More often than not, men and women would sit or stand frozen in time and space, revealing little about their character.

Americans seldom smiled in portraits. They seemed intuitively to understand the ennobling effects of portraiture. Intensely serious, their expressions were eternal, timeless, and imbued with either self-importance or self-reflection. After all, no one ever recalled a portrait of the national hero George Washington, or any other worthy figure in the popular prints of the day, grinning foolishly. Such animated, fleeting, and frivolous …