We’re not sure when or where a photographer first asked his subjects to state the name of the delicious dairy product, but we do know that when you say “cheese,” the corners of your mouth turn up, your cheeks lift and your teeth show. It looks like a smile, and since smiling is what we do in pictures, the instruction seems pretty practical.
The deeper question, then, is: why is a smile the default expression for photographs? In her 2005 essay “Why We say ‘Cheese’: Producing the Smile in Snapshot Photography,” Christina Kotchemidova, an Assistant Professor in Mass Communication at Spring Hill College in Mobile, AL, puts forth an interesting hypothesis that deserves a look.
Picture-perfect smiles weren’t always the norm, says Kotchemidova. The photos of the nineteenth century were ruled by stony, solemn faces. These early photos took their cues from traditional European fine art portraiture, where smiles were only worn by peasants, children and drunks. The etiquette and beauty standards of the time also called for a small, tightly controlled mouth.
At one London photo studio, the precursor to “say cheese” was actually “say prunes,” to help sitters form a small mouth.
Then, sometime in the twentieth-century, the smile became king, ruling over snapshots with an iron fist.
Prior studies of the smile in photography, Kotchemidova says, relate its rise to “the speedy camera shutter, attractive faces in media and politics, and the rise of dental care,” technological and cultural factors that may have begun a process of “mouth liberalization.” Kotchemidova, though, proposes that we look at smiling for the camera as a cultural construction of twentieth-century American snapshot photography.
Photography was once a pursuit for the rich. A the turn of the century, though, Kodak’s $1 Brownie camera (introduced in 1900), combined with their line of how-to books and pamphlets for photographers and their heavy advertising in prominent national magazines (these were the days when everyone read Life), created a mass market for photography and established the company as the leading expert on the subject. Kodak came into a position of what Kotchemidova calls “cultural leadership,” by framing the way photography, for which they supplied the technology, was conceptualized and used in the culture at large.
In its leadership role, Kodak marketed photography as fun and easy. The company’s slogan, “You press the button, we do the rest,” assured consumers that the hard work, developing the film and printing the photos, was left to Kodak technicians, and that taking snapshots was easy enough for anyone. Kodak’s ads and photography publications presented taking photos as a happy experience for both the photographer and the subject that served to preserve fond memories of good times. One way that message was communicated was plenty of smiling faces on happy consumers, which conveniently provided “a model for how subjects should look,” that quickly spread along with the adoption of the technology.
Kotchemidova concludes that Kodak’s position of leadership in the culture of photography and their saturation of the ads, magazines and their own publications with images of smiling faces allowed the company to define the standards and aesthetics of good snapshots, and smiling for the camera became the cultural norm.
For further reading: Kotchemidova, C. “Why we say ‘cheese’:Â Producing the smile in snapshot photography.” Critical Studies in Media Communication, 22 (1), 2-25, winter 2005.
Comments (23)
Comment
- subscribe /
- give a gift /
- terms of service /
- about /
- contact us /
- write for us /
- ad info /
- subscriber services /
- press /
- privacy policy /
- rss /
© 2012 Mental Floss Inc. All Rights Reserved. Mental Floss is a registered trademark owned by Felix Dennis. mentalfloss.com is a trademark owned by Felix Dennis.
Disclaimer: All submissions made to mental_floss become the property of Mental Floss Inc and may be used without further permission by the submitter and without compensation to the submitter. If you do not agree to these terms, please do not submit anything to mental_floss.
Cultural – critical scholarship … it all comes down to hegemony. You know, I really enjoyed this article/research until the ‘researchers’ starts talking about Kodak as the ‘big brother’ of photograpy, shaping social norms and such…
posted by ugh... on 6-3-2009 at 8:19 pm
Sounds like a lot of over-analysis to me. I’d always heard that the reason people didn’t smile in the old photos was because it took so long to expose the film, a relaxed face was much easier to maintain.
posted by Steve on 7-28-2009 at 3:40 pm
Umm…nice article, but doesn’t even attempt to explain the origin of saying “cheese.”
posted by Patrick on 8-7-2009 at 7:45 am
I think the word “Cheese” was explained at the beginning of the article–in saying the word it creates the smile. Interesting article.
posted by Ellie on 8-10-2009 at 8:41 pm
Hey Steve you are 100% right! Because it did take a longer time to expose the photo plate (it was a glass plate covered with a silver nitrate solution), subjects not only had a dour look on their faces, they were often forced have clamps on the back of their necks, arms and legs to ensure that they stayed still during the exposure. I image the smiles that occurred after the session would match anything you see today.
posted by Hawaii on 8-14-2009 at 3:45 pm
in iceland, they say “skyr”(yogurt).
posted by elizabeth-anne on 10-25-2009 at 10:58 am
the theory that the swiss invented photography is full of holes.
posted by dirk alan on 2-19-2010 at 9:34 pm
Spring Hill College, The drinking college of the South with the Jesuit problem. ;)
posted by Heather on 3-10-2010 at 3:44 pm
I always tell people to say “Sex!” It gets smiles.
posted by Tennessee Budd on 4-20-2010 at 4:29 pm
Last week I was at a local tourist spot in Oregon…lots of people taking pictures. We walked by a family of foreign tourist, jabbering away happily in their native tongue, but when they posed for a snapshot, everyone in the family uniformly exclaimed “Cheeese!”
posted by John on 4-26-2010 at 3:56 pm
Really interesting article. I enjoyed reading it. :-)
posted by aletheia on 6-16-2010 at 7:11 pm
my aunt and uncle were shutterbugs. my cousin – their son was having none of that . he made goofy faces in every single picture.
posted by dirk alan on 6-16-2010 at 8:50 pm
With due respect to Steve’s observation, I think it was a controlled look of anger when presented with the bill. Kodak changed all that and hence the smiles.
posted by iDrifter on 6-16-2010 at 9:16 pm
This whole bit about not smiling being the style is rubbish. When photographic portraits were first taken, the subject’s head had to be held in a clamp so that it did not move – for 4 hours! Try smiling with your head clamped into one position for that long.
posted by susan k. on 11-28-2010 at 6:47 pm
Steve is right, it would have been incredibly difficult to hold a smile for such a long time.Also,I’m pretty sure that quite a few individuals back then suffered from blackened or rotten teeth brought on by the mercury they mistakenly used to treat Syphilis,or by other cause of tooth decay, and since a blackened smile could be a mark of sexual promiscuity or such, I,m sure people would have been reluctant to smile. Around 1900 they stoped using mercury as a cure for Syphilis. Maybe there is a connection there, too…
posted by kim on 3-21-2011 at 3:33 pm
Interesting article
posted by Josh on 3-31-2011 at 6:01 pm
Yeah didn’t really hit why the word “cheese” was used but it’s because saying cheese gives you a great smile on your face. But why “cheese” was picked I’d still like to know. My 3 and 4 year old say toilet face and still have nice smiley pics!
posted by Nikki on 9-8-2011 at 12:39 pm
In Korea, they say “kimchi” instead of cheese. It produces that long ‘e’ smile.
posted by Jim on 9-19-2011 at 8:58 am
My husband makes our family say ‘gutcha’ pardon my spelling. It’s one of the Hungarian words for underwear. Nobody in the family smiles when they say the word but we all laugh.
posted by diana hampo on 9-25-2011 at 10:00 pm
In Chile, they say “Whiskey!” That also works, but I think ‘toilet face’ is my new favorite!
posted by zee on 11-26-2011 at 12:34 pm
When I did portraits in the local mall I’d always tell kids to say chocolate. No “long e” sound, but it almost always got genuine smiles.
posted by Charles on 12-2-2011 at 1:49 pm
My sister told me in Japan, they never really understood the concept of saying “Cheese”. The photographer of the group will say “Hai! Chizu!” (“yes, cheese”) and then take the picture, while everyone else smiled without having to say something. :)
posted by Pilly on 12-22-2011 at 2:55 pm
“When photographic portraits were first taken, the subject’s head had to be held in a clamp so that it did not move – for 4 hours! Try smiling with your head clamped into one position for that long.”
Exposure times were down to a few minutes by the 1860s. So: Head clamps, yes; neutral expressions, yes (because they’re easier to hold for 5-10 minutes); four-hour exposures, no.
posted by Joanna on 1-4-2012 at 4:34 pm