The photos were too flattering from the early days of photography, just as painted portraits were before that. Remember the archival daguerreotypes of people fr

The photos were too flattering from the early days of photography, just as painted portraits were before that. Remember the archival daguerreotypes of people from centuries past, carefully posed, lit, and retouched? Sure, those were the studio photos of often wealthier people. But that was already setting the trend of creating an embellished likeness to span over times. The mass photography kind of broke that studio access barrier, but not the flattering barrier. So for some time the photos were more "documentary". Meanwhile it also set that wastefulness trend partly due to inexperience, partly due to cheap or complex hardware, partly due to just plain old consumerism (double sets of auto-cropped 3x5 for the price of one set etc). Still, that desire for creating the flatering images never ceased, and for the important events a pro photographer would be budgeted. Finally, with an advent of digital and esp. smartphone photography the access to flattering likeness has been fully democratized. Curiously, the increased wastefulness of digital photos also devalued the importance of the personal images. Who can sit through gigabytes of me-here-me-there pics? Prints too, their retrospective importance is lost to reminded glances at the past you which are offered by social networks apps. I guess, the last barrier left to break in this is the critical eye that chooses from tons of virtual images only those which truly worth to materialize in prints for spanning over the times AND weave them into a life-story worth someone elses attention. How much time will one have in the future to perceive the pictorial life of one's grand-grand-pa? Of course, it will still be flattering. I'm sure there're already apps for that.