Vacation slide shows
When I lived in australia, the worst social crime you could commit was to inflict the tedium of holiday snapshots upon friends, relatives or associates. It was a blunder that ranked with pinching a mate’s girlfriend, turning up to a party at the time stated on the invitation, or drinking a bigger bloke’s beer. Holiday slides were an ordeal you may have suffered through if you were keen on a girl and her father insisted you see the pics from the last holiday to Dubbo. But somehow, as you viewed the fifteenth shot of the family posed outside the International Sheep Shearing Museum, you had the sinking feeling that the relationship was doomed anyway. Of course, older aunties delighted in seeing your slides. Then again, they were just as happy playing bingo, or watching dust motes dancing in the sunlight and believing they were still living in 1955. Simply put, few Australians would submit to the boredom of viewing someone else’s precious holiday memories without putting up a fight, being under serious sedation or proffering some sort of medical excuse. Imagine my surprise then, when first having arrived in Munich, at being dragged off to an exhibition on Australia, which turned out to be a travel monologue on a German couple’s journey through the Red Centre on their bikes. Several hundred people crowded in to see slides projected onto a screen by the woman while the man, encased behind a podium and a cheesy mustache, raved on at length about their adventures. His most memorable line was, “A cyclist in the middle of Australia is as rare as a kangaroo on a German Autobahn.” That line killed the audience. They laughed in the aisles, but I felt they were missing the point. Why would anyone want to ride a bike through the middle of Australia in the first place? The most notable feature of the Australian interior is desert. Apart from a few highlights like Ayers Rock, which majestically punches its way through the desert floor, this landscape is unrelentingly flat. Unless approached by a highly skilled photographer, the resulting images can be almost painfully monotonous. Conclusive evidence was presented that night. Almost every shot featured one or both of the cyclists posed with bikes against a landscape dominated by a vast azure sky and emptiness. The only distinguishing elements were the number of sheep skulls strewn about on the ground, the occasional decomposing kangaroo on the roadside and the prominence of the mustache in the foreground. “Travel is the fourth wave of German postwar obsession,” a sociologist explained months later at a party. Immediately after the war, he argued, Germans were preoccupied with food and drink. After that, they were obsessed with housing and, then, during the years of the Economic Miracle, with automobiles. After growing rich and prosperous, their attention turned to travel. For Germans, the annual trip abroad has become almost a sacred ritual. Television networks cram their schedules full of travel documentaries, and the choice of holiday packages available here is simply staggering. This theory does not, however, reveal why Germans are fascinated with Diashows (slide shows). Nor does it explain why they would willingly pay to attend an event that would have most people running from their friends’ living rooms in fright. “You have to understand that Germans are the world masters of travel and their interest in slide shows is simply an extension of this,” Michael Martin, a leading Diashow presenter, explains. “One of our traits is thoroughness, and we like to be well prepared. People undertaking a holiday will willingly pay to see a Diashow to gain hints, tips and ideas from people who have already been there. Others attend because they wish to recapture memories of their own trip to that destination.” Martin, a Munich resident who has toured Germany with his own shows for more than 20 years, believes the German obsession with Diashows has historical roots. “It is certainly restricted to Germany, Austria and Switzerland. One reason for this is the high value Germans have always placed upon slides. In the same way the camera is highly valued in Japan, the slide projector has always been accorded a high value in Germany. This is still true. Today the entire world production of slide projectors comes from Germany.” Twenty years ago, when Martin presented his first show, the public Diashow was unknown. As presentations extended from small circles of friends to the Volkshochschule (“peoples’ high school” or adult education classes) and, then finally, to the general public, the appeal of Diashows seemed to know no bounds. Today, judging by the listings in Volkshochschule programs and the thickly plastered posters on the Litfasssäulen (advertising columns), the market has reached saturation point. Altogether, there are more than 100 professional slide show presenters in Germany, with another 5,000 people giving amateur or semiprofessional presentations. For the professionals, this means a constant search for new angles or material, investing in new photographic techniques or technology and ensuring the highest quality possible in their slides. Martin’s upcoming show, for example, focuses on the deserts of the earth. In all, the production will have taken a total of five years to plan, research and prepare. Diashows fall into two categories. The first is a standard travelogue on such places as Ireland, Scotland, the United States, India or Cuba, or a topic, such as North American Indians. The other is the adventure show. This takes the audience to exotic and sometimes dangerous locations, such as Burma, the Amazonian rainforests, Tibet or the wilds of Africa. This type often involves exceptionally bizarre means of travel, such as rafting down piranha and crocodile-infested rivers, bicycling through Australia or motorbiking through African deserts. One presenter even undertook a hang glider tour through central Africa. As it was such an unusual item, he had the hang glider certified as drilling equipment so as not to arouse problems at customs checkpoints. Martin, who specializes in this type of Diashow, says the intention is not to provide viewers with information about a particular destination or even to inspire them to travel there. “Perhaps they have always dreamed of making such a journey, but the reality is that very few people actually undertake it. We give them the opportunity to experience what it may be like and to see a new or unusual aspect of the planet. In a sense, we sell them their dreams.” <<< Photographer Michael Martin will present “The Best Diashows” on Sunday, March 12, at the Muffathalle, starting at 11:00. Admission DM 20. Information at www.michael-martin.de.