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| French Actress Mlle. Nostier, circa 1905 |
In school, I didn’t like history class. It was presented in a dry, boring fashion. I couldn’t keep all those dates and names straight. I also felt I had nothing in common with those long dead people.
So, why in the world do I write historical fiction?
I have discovered the joy and beauty of history and the characters who lived it. They are not who I thought they were. The more historical tidbits I learn, the more I realize not much has changed. Oh, sure we have more technology but people are basically the same. Same fears, same issues, same hopes and dreams.
A writing friend found little snippets in old newspapers that read a lot like current day social media posts about kittens and pranks. Who would have thought? Apparently, things haven’t changed so much.
One of the things with all our modern technology is how anyone can change how they appear in a picture with things like photoshop, face-tuning, and filters. A person can change the colors, put any background behind them, erase skin blemishes, modify facial and body features, and so much more, like special effects. It’s hard to know what’s real anymore. I don’t think this modern trend is doing us any favors. We’ll look back a hundred years from now and not know how people really looked.
Back in the good ol’ days, a picture spoke a thousand words. Or did they? Even back at the beginning of photography, some of those “words” were altered. Changing what we look like didn’t start with the computer age or even the invention of photography. Back when portraits were painted, people wanted their likeness to not be too accurate. Even before photography, the subject/s of a portrait requested that the artist “adjust” certain features to improve them.
But I figured before the advent of computers and photo-manipulating type software, altering a photograph was rarely if ever done. Today, there are so many apps that allow the casual user to change anything about an image to where it hardly resembles the original. Some of these are fun and hilarious.
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| Camille_Clifford_as_Marquise_de_Pompadour,_1907 | |
It seems since the beginning of photography, the subject of the image wanted to appear different than they were in reality. Photographs were first printed on paper in 1847. When photography was beginning to gain popularity, cartes-de-visite (visting cards) were created in France in the 1850s, a smaller (2.5 x 4 inches) precursor to cabinet cards. Cabinet cards consisted of a thin-paper photograph (roughly 4 x 5.5 inches) mounted on a light-to-heavy-weight cardstock (roughly 3.5 x 6.5 inches). Where the cartes-de-visite were small and designed to give as calling cards or to give to a friend, cabinet cards by design were meant to sit upon a cabinet and could be viewed from across the room.
Not everyone wanted others to see them as the truly looked. A skilled photographer could alter the negative before printing a photograph, anything from smoothing out a person’s complexion to slimming down the waist to achieve that perfect S-shaped figure. There were whole manuals on how to retouch negatives. Let’s take another look at that cabinet card from the beginning of this article.
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| Close-Up of the Waist--French Actress Mlle. Nostier, circa 1905 |
Notice the white space between the small of her back and her arm. That’s where the photographer scraped away her waist for the desired look. This one is quite obvious, but others were more cleverly disguised. Another technique was penciling in part of the background over the waist. The majority of the photo-altering was done to remove freckles, wrinkles, and other facial blemishes. (For more examples of historical photo-altering visit Bernadette Banner’s video on this topic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYGUfg_NJzg)
I guess I assumed the old photographs were accurate, but where there is vanity, there is retouching. The more I think modern people have little in common with people of bygone eras, the more I find out they aren’t much different.
In The Damsel’s Intent (Quilting Circle 3), a stranger watching Aunt Henny has a cabinet card he is often looking at. In The Débutante’s Secret (Quilting Circle 4), Aunt Henny learns who that stranger is and why that cabinet card is so fascinating.
THE QUILTING CIRCLE SERIES Box Set
Historical Romance Series
By Mary Davis
THE WIDOW’S PLIGHT (Book1) – Will a secret clouding a single mother’s past cost Lily her loved ones?
THE DAUGHTER’S PREDICAMENT (Book2) *SELAH & WRMA Finalist* – As Isabelle’s romance prospects turn in her favor, a family scandal derails her dreams.
THE DAMSEL’S INTENT (Book3) *SELAH Winner* – Nicole heads down the mountain to fetch herself a husband. Can she learn to be enough of a lady to snag the handsome rancher?
THE DÉBUTANTE’S SECRET (Book4) – Complications arise when a fancy French lady steps off the train and into Deputy Montana’s arms.
Mary lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband of thirty-seven years and one cat. She has three adult children and three incredibly adorable grandchildren. Find her online at: Books2Read Newsletter Blog FB FB Readers Group Amazon GoodReads BookBub
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