[pure-silver] Old portrait technique?

I've been scanning a boatload of ancient prints the past two years, most 
ranging from as 
recently as 1950 as far back as about 1885. A few have shown a phenomenon that  
puzzles me. I'm wondering whether anyone on the list is familiar with this.

Every one of the images in question is a formal studio portrait. These date 
(I'm 
guessing) from the 1930s and the 1940s. (I'm stabbing at this, and/but the 
subjects 
either are known relatives or were related to people I can ID). The odd thing 
is that all of 
the prints have been blacked out (faded blackout) at about or below the knees. 
Initially I 
supposed that I was looking at print deterioration; but after encountering a 
good half-
dozen of these, I have begun to think that photographers were deliberately 
raising or 
dropping one of the standards so the image would "softly" or "gradually" 
fade/cut off the 
portrait for a sort of softened or faded look. 

It's hard to isolate the examples as to time and place. A bunch of them come 
from the 
collection of my partner's father, who is Japanese-American but was raised in 
Japan 
before and during the war. So his photos include portraits shot in 
occupation-era Japan. 
But some also include portraits of his father and brother, shot in at least one 
studio in 
California's Central Valley, where my partner's Japanese grandfather was 
operating a 
farm before the arrests that followed Pearl Harbor. Also, I've come across a 
couple of 
these in photographs I recently inherited from my own father - photos shot in 
studios in 
Springfield, Illinois in the 1930s.

As I said, I thought at first that these were instances of deterioration; but 
the 
deterioration I've encountered tends to involve fading. Even where it involves 
silvering, 
there already must have been heavy black to begin with. So was this a portrait 
style, or 
should I be viewing this as some kind of print deterioration? If so, what does 
it signify?

Sorry, I don't have a webpage where I can post examples. 

Mike Healy
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