A Brief History of Happy Snaps (The Naked City)

‘A Brief History of Happy Snaps’ is the latest column (November 2, 2024) from Coffin Ed‘s The Naked City column – featured exclusively on City Hub.

Back in the 60s and 70s the more affluent Australian families often embarked on a grand tour to Europe or the United States. They invariably travelled there on an ocean liner and were the envy of their less prosperous friends and family. They recorded their sightseeing on a variety of cameras from the humble Box Brownie to early slide and 8mm movie cameras. When they arrived back home, they regularly invited those less fortunate friends and family to a ‘slide night’, to relive their own trip abroad and exacerbate the envy.

For their guests the night was often a painful experience, forced to sit through dozens of bad, often out of focus holiday snaps, accompanied by a running commentary of “this was when we were outside Buckingham Palace” or “look at us entering the Haunted Mansion ride at Disneyland”. The only good thing about these nights for the visitors were the booze and party pies handed out to ease the suffocating boredom.

As the technology improved a variety of new gadgets replaced the old Bell & Howell slide projector. 8mm movie cameras often produced a grainy, blurry result but at least the image was moving. Then there was the Viewmaster, a real specialist item as the actual Viewmaster 3D camera cost a small fortune. The well to do could share their Viewmaster slides in a dedicated viewer or invest in a very expensive 3D projector. At least with the polarised 3D glasses required for the latter, their reluctant guests could discreetly doze off until the party pies arrived.

Of course people also took conventional cameras on tour, from the early Kodak models to the more sophisticated 35mm. When the holiday finished you would drop your rolls of film in at the local chemist and then after a wait of about a week you would get the prints. The expectation was always high but not so the results. Whoops you fogged the film whilst loading it into the camera or managed to shoot the whole roll out of focus. Sadly there was often only a motley bunch of snaps to remind you of the great time you had.

The introduction of the internet and mobile phones changed everything and slide nights went the way of hula hoops and YoYo crazes. With WhatsApp and Instagram you could now share your holiday snaps almost instantaneously with friends right around the world. Facebook pages soon became clogged with endless pics of travellers in front of well known landmarks or engaged in weird cultural rituals like ‘cheese rolling’ in the UK.

These days if you are going on holiday and want to let all and sundry know about it, you need to strap a GoPro to your body and start posting your own travel vlogs on YouTube. Travellers do it for a variety of motives. The more successful vlogs reap a monetary return provided they get thousands of hits. With others it’s a genuine shared experience, highlighting both the good and bad of adventures in a foreign land. Many Vlogs are covert forms of advertising, pushing stays at certain hotels or resorts whilst others hark back to the days of the old slide night and are simply travellers boasting and big noting themselves.

What the future holds technology wise in the capture and broadcast of that quintessential holiday moment is anybody’s guess. AI is certainly going to play its part and maybe you won’t even need to fork out for a plane fare to travel the world and document your most exciting experiences.

In your virtual vlog you will be able to bare your bum in disdain before the statues of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il at the Mansudea Hill Grand Monument in North Korea, spit chewing gum on the pavement in Singapore and get filthy, rotten drunk in Saudi Arabia. We’ve come a long way since the 3D Viewmaster!