The whole operation ran once a year with military efficiency, and it produced the only formal photograph most children had taken of them – which is why the results are still in drawers everywhere. Here are twelve.
1. Being Told the Night Before
Notice went home in advance so that everybody arrived in reasonable condition, which produced a brief and unusual attention to appearance across an entire school.
Standards slipped by the second period. The advance warning is what made the day different from every other.
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2. The Corner of the Hall
A backdrop, a stool, a light and a camera were set up in one end of a room used for everything else, converting it into a studio for the day.
The rest of the hall carried on around it. The improvised studio is the setup every school used.
3. Queuing by Class
Classes were brought through in sequence and waited in a line along a corridor, which took most of the morning and produced a great deal of standing about.
Waiting was longer than the photograph by a wide margin. The queue is what the day mostly consisted of.
4. The Adjustment
On arrival somebody turned your shoulders, straightened your head, moved your chin and adjusted your collar, all within about four seconds and without explanation.
It was done to everybody identically. The positioning is the part conducted entirely without your involvement.
5. The Comb
A comb appeared, was used on whoever needed it, and was used on the next person, which nobody at the time regarded as remarkable.
It is the detail people find least believable now. The shared comb is the practice that has entirely ended.
6. Being Told to Say Something
A word was requested to produce an expression, the same word all day, delivered by somebody who had said it several hundred times already.
The results show varying degrees of compliance. The prompt is the instruction everybody was given and nobody needed.
7. The Shutter Going at the Wrong Moment
A blink, a half-turn, an expression caught mid-change – and there was no way to know until the envelope arrived weeks later that anything had gone wrong.
No preview existed. The mistimed frame is the risk that could not be checked.
8. The Group Photograph
Occasionally the whole class or the whole school was arranged in rows on tiered benches, which took substantially longer and involved somebody always moving.
Somebody was always obscured. The group shot is the version that required an hour and produced one usable frame.
9. Waiting Weeks for the Envelope
The results came back long afterwards, in a paper envelope handed out in class, sealed, with a price list and an order form inside.
The delay had made everybody forget. The envelope is the arrival that reopened a day nobody had thought about since.
10. Everybody Looking at Each Other
The envelopes were opened immediately and simultaneously, and the entire class compared results in a brief period of enthusiastic and unkind assessment.
It was over within ten minutes. The comparison is the ritual the envelope triggered.
11. The Negotiation About Which Package
The order form offered combinations at different prices, and the decision involved an adult, a calculation and a discussion about who actually needed a wallet-sized copy.
Somebody always got the largest one. The package choice is the household decision the whole exercise led to.
12. Them Being Everywhere for Decades
Copies were distributed to grandparents, put in frames, kept in wallets and filed in drawers, which is why these particular photographs survive in such quantity.
They outlasted almost every other photograph of the period. The wide distribution is why everybody still has theirs.
One Morning, One Frame, No Preview
A studio in a hall, a queue down a corridor, four seconds of adjustment and a single exposure – and then several weeks before anybody found out whether it had worked.
The last item explains why these photographs are so ubiquitous. They were the only formal portrait most families had taken in a given year, they were ordered in multiple copies and distributed widely on purpose – which means a photograph produced in four seconds by somebody who never learned your name is frequently the best surviving record of what you looked like at nine.
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