WHAT A PICTURE!
SUN, SEA AND THE SNAPSHOT. SAY CHEESE, AS WE CELEBRATE THE TRADITION OF HOLIDAY PHOTOGRAPHY
Grandad grins at you from his deckchair, mum squints into the sunshine, while a child brandishes their spade proudly. In another, a toddler takes their first tentative steps into the sea, firmly gripped by two supportive adults, trousers rolled up for the purpose. These particular photos actually date from the 1930s but they could have easily been taken any time, on any beach, from then to today. The holiday snap – alongside records of births, birthdays and weddings – is a staple of the family photo album, a way of marking our memories that’s been going strong for over a century.
Recording our holidays came about almost as early as we started taking them en masse. The growth of the railways in the 19th century, and the introduction of cheaper fares, meant more people could get to the seaside, and the first Bank Holidays became law in 1871. Those who could afford it went into photographers’ studios for posed shots with their friends and families as mementos of such special occasions, while at places of leisure, such as the seaside, mobile photographers took portraits of holidaymakers. Their images were developed on glass or, more likely, tin plates in mobile dark rooms. Their craft wasn’t held in high regard (they were referred to by names such as ‘Bodger’ or ‘Smudger’) and they gained a reputation for overly pestering their potential customers.
HOLIDAYS ARE KODAK DAYS
Around the same time, in the US, George Eastman figured out a clever way to open the growing photography market to more than specialists. His camera was pre-loaded with film, which was then posted back to be developed. Photos and camera were returned to the owner around ten days later. It came with a book that allowed the user to note what (and how many of
“The holiday snap is a staple of the photo album, alongside births, birthdays and weddings”
the 100 exposures) had been taken. Launched in 1888, Eastman called his new venture ‘Kodak’. It was an immediate success: to cope with demand this side of the Atlantic, the company opened a processing plant in Harrow just three years later. Kodak made photography even more accessible with the 1900 launch of the ‘Brownie’. Designed to be mass produced, it was cheaper: more than 50,000 Brownies were sold in England alone in the first year. The new breed of photographers that it inspired, taking photos that were more about capturing the moment than creating art, were sniffily nicknamed ‘snapshooters’.
Kodak deliberately targeted a wide market – their adverts emphasised the camera’s simplicity, using images of women, even children, with the tagline: ‘ You press the button, we do the rest’. And they also knew that holidays were exactly where the taking of photographs would happen, and therefore where their cameras should be taken. Another slogan stated, ‘The only holiday that lasts forever is the holiday with a Kodak’. Kodak prints were made at a user-friendly size, helping them – and the associated memories – to be easily shared between friends and family.
THE MODERN ‘ REFLEX’ MAN
Unsurprisingly, many other companies followed Kodak’s lead, with the likes of Germany’s Leica and Japan’s Canon launching in the interwar period. Cameras were getting better and better, and the prices were getting cheaper and cheaper. A Kodak camera in 1939 cost about 1% of the price it did when it first launched. Because these new kinds of cameras were much more portable, they could be taken on all sorts of pleasurable expeditions: picnics and tea parties,
“Few memories are so pleasant as memories of your holidays”
cycling outings and hikes. And, of course, summer holidays.
However, there were still enough people without their own camera that meant beach photographers were still peddling their wares after the First World War. They’d had a makeover, however, and now tended to be students, sometimes even women, uniformed and well versed in social niceties. They would take photos on spec, developing them overnight, letting holiday makers see – and hopefully purchase – the results the next day, presented in their own branded wallet. In 1923, the British Journal of Photography described how “Most up-to-date resorts are this year leasing exclusive beach photography rights to the modern ‘reflex’ man, who has no use for mobile dark-rooms and unnatural backgrounds. The ‘reflex’ man… has other methods. He doesn’t pose his customers, but wades into the water, snapshotting the bathers in perfectly natural attitudes”. These so-called ‘ Walkies’ were taken in huge numbers: 35,000 by Margate’s Sunbeam Photos over August Bank Holiday, 1939, alone – you can get a taste at the site of The South East Archive of Seaside Photography (seasphotography.org.uk). From crying toddlers being posed on fake donkeys to children being buried up to their heads in the sand, they’re what we’d picture when we hear the words ‘holiday snap’.
MAKE IT SNAPPY
The beach photography profession wound up in the 1960s, finished by the combined whammy of cheap foreign holidays and vastly more affordable cameras and film developing. That same decade saw the launch of the Instamatic Kodak, making colour photography so easy that apparently, “even mum could use it”, and also their carousel slide projector. That helped another holiday ritual: lengthy slide shows of the likes of your aunty Carol’s annual trip to Spain. Never mind the critical words of photographer Hugo van Wadenoyen who described the photos taken by “millions of snapshooters” postwar as “mildly evocative possibly to the imaginations of those immediately concerned in the events recorded, but merely fatuous and boring to the outsider”. We became used to instant results, with the rise of the Polaroid, and subsequently digital photography (which, officially, took over film as the most popular method in 2003), meaning that really any moment at all is there for the snapping. Arguably, however, because we take so many photos, they’ve become less valuable commodities – the art of assembling a photo album most neglected. A 1920 Kodak advertisement wrote, “Few memories are so pleasant as the memories of your holidays. And yet, you allow those memories to slip away!” Perhaps we should all take note.