Say cheese? Oh do be serious!
QUESTION In early photographs everyone is straight-faced. When did it become common practice for people to smile for the camera? When someone points a camera at us, it is a natural reflex to smile. This is the cultural and social reflex of our time, but in the long history of portraiture, the open smile has been a rarity.
In Charles Dickens’s nicholas nickleby (1838-39), the portrait painter Miss La Creevy ponders the problem: ‘...People are so dissatisfied and unreasonable, that, nine times out of ten, there’s no pleasure in painting them. Sometimes they say, “Oh, how very serious you have made me look, Miss La Creevy!” and at others, “La, Miss La Creevy, how very smirking!” . . .
‘In fact, there are only two styles of portrait painting; the serious and the smirk; and we always use the serious for professional people (except actors sometimes), and the smirk for private ladies and gentlemen who don’t care so much about looking clever.’
Perhaps this lack of smiling explains why the enigmatic smile of Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa has fascinated us for so long.
While people may have been conditioned not to smile in paintings, there were more practical reasons when it came to portrait photography. The earliest daguerreotypes required long exposure times, so it was difficult to maintain a smile throughout. People would tire, change their expression, and ruin the result.
The simplest way to sit for a portrait was to relax the face muscles and look serious. In the handful of early portraits where the subject was smiling it is usually something of a rictus grin, exposing the top teeth.
early subjects were also often unwilling to smile. Dental hygiene during the 19th century was poor. The cure for a decayed or broken tooth was often simply to pull it. People with rotten, missing or chipped teeth might have preferred to have their pictures taken with their mouths closed.
In 1900, with Kodak’s introduction of the Brownie camera, photography became safe, affordable and easy to use for the public in a way that it had never been before. With shutter speeds in the fractions of a second, Kodak coined the concept and usage of the term ‘snapshot’ and the smile became the norm.
David Welland, Bath, Somerset. QUESTION What is the origin of the surname of Emmanuel Macron, the new President of France? The election of emmanuel Macron to the French Presidency on May 14, 2017 has led to some scholarly interest in his genealogy and unusual surname.
President Macron’s father, Jean-Michel Macron, is a doctor and professor of neurology at the University of Picardy. his mother, Francoise Macron-nogues, is a doctor. he is married to his former teacher Brigitte Macron (born Brigitte Marie-Claude Trogneux).
President Macron’s patrilineal ancestry can be traced back to his eight times great-grandfather, Francois Macron, who was born, c. 1663, in Authie, Somme, nord-Pas-de-Calais-Picardie. his maternal grandparents are from Bagneres-de-Bigorre, haute-Pyrenees.
Three possible explanations have been put forward for the origin of Macron. There is an ancient Picardy pejorative word, maqueron, which designates the chin, so the name was perhaps given to an ancestor who had a strong or pronounced chin.
It might be linked to the Germanic surname Macquart, from the word
magan, meaning strength; it may have been the nickname of a strong man.
The most popular definition is that it is derived from a diminutive of maqueron, a word derived from the middle Dutch
makelaer, meaning a broker ie, someone who could conduct commercial transactions effectively — an appropriate name for a former investment banker and President of France.
Clare Duval, Cheltenham, Glos. QUESTION With increasingly hoppy beers on the market, is there an official measure of bitterness? Which is the bitterest beer? The bitterness of beer is measured using the International Bitterness (or bittering) Unit. The IBU is not a measure of perceived bitterness, but of the concentration of a certain class of chemical compounds from hops.
The strict definition is simple: An IBU measures, in parts-per-million (ppm), isohumulone, the primary chemical compound derived from hops that makes beer taste bitter, in a given volume of beer. Isohumulone is created when the alpha acids in hops isomerise in the boil.
Almost all beers fall in the 1-100 IBU range. An upper limit is reached when the beer is saturated with iso-alpha acid, somewhere around 110 to 120 IBU.
here are a few examples of IBU measurements of familiar types of beer: everyday lagers, 8-15 IBU; ordinary bitter, 25-35 IBU; India pale ale, 40-70 IBU (the American Imperial or double IP ales go as high as 120 IBU); Russian imperial stout, up to 90 IBU.
IBUs are only a general guide to bitterness. Beer requires a balance of ingredients and taste. You can drink a strong amber ale rated 60 IBU that doesn’t taste nearly as bitter as a 55 IBU pale ale.
The bitterest beer ever made was created by the Flying Monkeys Craft Brewery in Canada. In 2011, it produced just six bottles of a massively hopped IPA called Flying Monkeys Alpha Fornication, which tested at 2,500 IBU.
It was 13.3 per cent alcohol and described as pouring like pea soup and being almost undrinkable.
hart & Thistle’s hop Mess Monster V2.0, is a Canadian brew with a theoretical bitterness of 1,066 units. It is made by adding 18.5lb of hops per barrel. Praised for its citrusy flavours, it is popular.
G. Ruston, London SW6.