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Untitled Carte-de-visite albumen print Circa 1880s Photograph by B Kisch From the late 1860s to the 1890s the majority of men presented a hirsute appearance, with the exception of aesthetes who believed that a clean-shaven face gave them a more fastidious and aesthetic appearance. Sideburns, allowed to grow further down the face, developed into a variety of side-whiskers - broad and bushy 'mutton-chop' whiskers, or long and combed out, known as Piccadilly weepers. Side whiskers might be worn with or without a moustache, as might the fringe beard running round under the chin, in the late 1850s and early 1860s. Full beards covering the chin, combined with a moustache, were cut in many different ways - full and very bushy, rounded and neat like General Grant's in America, or slightly more pointed like that of the Prince of Wales in England. A narrow pointed beard from just under the lower lip to an inch or so below the chin, known as a goatee, was worn by Napoleon III with a long moustache waxed out straight at the sides. A waxed moustache turned up at the ends was associated with Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany and might be referred to as a 'Kaiser' moustache. By the late 1880s and the 1890s the clean-shaven face was coming back into fashion, but many older men continued to wear a beard or moustache well into the new century. See more here: https://hyperallergic.com/357184/age-of-the-beard-florence-nightingale-museum/ In 1878/9 Benjamin Kisch was operating his Durban studio without the help of his brother Henry, also a photographer, who had moved to Pietermaritzburg in 1875. At the date this photo was taken - and until 1880 - Benjamin Kisch worked from his studio in Smith Street ‘opposite the Durban Club’; previously advertised as ‘Kisch Bros’ now ‘Benjamin Kisch, photographer and artist’. In 1881 he moved to premises in Mercury Lane, Durban, ‘opposite the Congregational Church’. He died in 1889. His widow continued to run the studio in Mercury Lane until 1894, when she surrendered the business to B W Greenacre, who held a bond on the premises. Greenacre later sold the studio to Ebenezer Edmund Caney, another famous Natal family of photographers.