Old photos

I once saw a photo of a couple of ancestors from about a century ago, wearing silly hats and playing the fool.  There's something very humanizing about people from the past looking silly.  I was wondering, a century from now will people be looking at photos of us and wondering who we were and what our lives were like?

I like looking at really early photographs from the age of daguerrotypes.  People seemed to have a more genuine look in such pictures simply because they hadn't learned to pose for the camera. (Smiling for the camera only appeared in the late 19th century, when exposure times became shorter so people didn't have to sit still long.) In that PBS documentary about the Civil War, I especially liked the photographs by people like Matthew Brady.

Just today I saw a photo of a beatnik party from 1960 or so.  But it was a color photo, which didn't quite seem right to me.  People like beatniks I just associate more with black & white photos. (It's the same with photos of World War II.) And I find that sexy women seem sexier in black & white than in color.  I guess black & white seems more focused.