Victorians often looked grim and staid - people from another era. But curator Chris Wild offers a fa

Victorians often looked grim and staid - people from another era. But curator Chris Wild offers a fascinating snapshot of family life that reveals the Victorians and Edwardians were often more modern than we think *** Nothing is known for certain about this set of beguiling portraits (above) - they have no supporting text or provenance or description of any kind. In my view, none is required. What we can say for certain is that here are our ancestors clowning around, more than 100 years ago. This is very rare for Victorian and Edwardian photographs. Why? Because even though exposure times had rapidly decreased across the 19th Century, photography was still an activity primarily practised by photographers rather than everyone. This was to change, and the introduction of Kodak’s Box Brownie camera in 1900 facilitated that change and made the snapshot possible. Still, for many people, having one’s photograph taken was a rare event before 1914. Perhaps these images were test shots for a professional photographer. Whatever the case, as outliers to photographic history, they tear a hole in our map of the past, a hole in which we see our predecessors as charmingly human. For an added bonus, one of the pictures is of a hound.. Day out at the gallows and other bygone photographic oddities–BBC News -- source link

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