Faces that will never be again

Boris Akunin says: “Is it okay if I still ride my favorite skate - I’ll talk about old (this time the oldest) photographs? I will not scare the dead, do not be afraid.

I once wrote about why antique photographs intrigue me so much. I know it sounds silly, but to me they are absolute proof that the past really existed. Portraits made by a painter are of interest to me only if the master is especially good or if the subject is famous for something. But I can peer into any photographic portrait of the 19th century for a long time. This is the material shadow of a person, imprinted on the plate. All that's left of a life long gone.

The older the cards, the sweeter they are to me. Therefore, most of all I love the very first portraits - daguerreotypes.

(Total 14 photos)

Source: Journal/borisakunin

1. In the studio of a daguerreotypist

They look (most often directly at me) faces of two types. The first includes those that no longer exist. And most of them are. We have changed a lot in more than a century and a half, because life has evolved a lot. Due to an unhealthy diet, poorly developed medicine, and unsettled life, people looked different. There was a different facial expression - people smiled less and did not play friendly. Worse skin care. There were more noticeable traces of past illnesses. They used to get old. They felt the fragility of life more acutely. And so on and so forth. Faces that are no longer there look, for example, like this:

2. Faces that are no longer there look, for example, like this

3. And this, probably, was the portrait of Nastasya Filippovna, which struck Prince Myshkin

Now such famm fatalities have disappeared. The current ones look very different.

In the same category - pictures from another life - there are funny photographs, evidence of a change in morals and ideas about the interesting.

4. Here is the railway worker Philias Gage proudly showing the pin with which he knocked out his eye and made a hole in his head. The injury made Gage a celebrity - he survived after a unique cranial operation for those times. 1848

5. And this is the star of the freak show - "The Bearded Lady from Geneva." 1853

6. Photoshop of the 19th century: the appearance of a ghost. Notice the hair on end.

7. The first "nudity" appeared immediately, as soon as the camera learned to shoot people. Oh, what was the demand for such piquancy! 1839

(From this demonstration of rickets, by the way, the whole erotic industry will subsequently grow).

It's fun to look at frankly staged shots - they were in great fashion.

8. Geography lesson. 1850.

Below is the earliest domestic photographic portrait.

9. Sugar manufacturer and lover of all sorts of novelties like daguerreotype A.A. Bobrinsky (by the way, the grandson of Catherine the Great) portrays a high intellectual. 1842.

With pictures of people who no longer exist, everything is clear. I examine such cards with curiosity or with a smile - without a nagging feeling, without sadness. Things of bygone days. The old townsfolk lived a completely different life, different from ours. Dead. Burdock has grown. Well, rest in peace.

Another thing is a person of the second type: like you and me. Today's. Not often, but there are some. Every time I feel uncomfortable. It is as if an evil spell has kidnapped a living person, put him under glass, and he looks from there, mute and helpless.

Sometimes, however, it seems to me that the prisoners feel good there, in the faded photograph, and they do not at all strive to return. So maybe the spell isn't evil.

I will now show you such faces.

This is the very first - generally the first - photographic portrait (1839). A man named Peter Cornelius is filming himself.

10. Do you see that he is alive? I see.

11. Look at the grandmother with her grandson.

Looks like the mummers from a low-budget TV show that saves on casting. Now the shooting will end, they will change into normal clothes and go home by subway. And by the way, the old woman (Sophia Ireland was her name) born in 1773 ...

12. Three Berlin girls from 1843

The top one, and especially the one on the right, are decorous old medchen. And on the left, it’s not clear how my niece Asya got there. True, not outrageous, as in normal times. The photographer's uncle is probably shy.

13. The man has something wrong with his hair and the bow is tied, obviously for fun. And so - at least now in Moscow "Jean-Jacques", drink a double espresso and read the news on the iPad.

14. And I look at this romantic lady and think that at the age of fifteen I could well have fallen in love with her, just as the young hero of my novel Bellona falls in love with a daguerreotype. This is Dorothy, sister of photographer John Draper. The poor thing stared at one point for 65 seconds without blinking (which probably explains the magical look), and for her long-suffering she went down in history: this is the world's first female portrait (1839).

From us, of course, there will be much more physical evidence that we once lived. All we do is click each other. Our digital portraits will not yellow or fade.

I wonder only what our faces will seem to distant descendants? Yours or someone else's? Understandable and close - or those that no longer exist?