Man eating rice, China, 1901-1904
this is an extremely important picture
Ive never seen someone from 1904 having fun omg
He has a nice face
No but the history behind this picture is really interesting
The reason that everyone always looked miserable in old photos wasn’t that they took too long to take. Once photography became widespread it took only seconds to take a picture.
It was because getting your photo taken was treated the same as getting your portrait painted. A very serious occasion meant so thst your descendants would know that ypu existed and what you looked like.
But one time some British dudes went to china to go on an anthropological expedition, and they met some rural Chinese farmers and decided to take their pictures. Now, these people weren’t exposed to the weird culture of the time around getting your photo taken, so this guy just flashed a big grin during the photo because he was told to strike a pose and that’s the pose he wanted to strike.
I think painted portraits and old photos give us the idea that in general people were just really unhappy because those are the visuals we have. This is so refreshing.
Hey, look; “Man Laughing Alone With Rice” is back on my dash.
always reblog Happy Rice Guy. once upon a time, he really enjoyed his lunch, and that’s beautiful.