I’ve always been a bit of a Singapore history buff and I just can’t seem to get enough of old photos of Singapore. The Singapore National Album of Pictures (SNAP) is a great resource and they also publish some great pictures on flickr as well. The photographs that chronicle old Singapore—things like the Donors Collection—are a treasure chest which chronicle modern Singapore’s growth and history.
I just have two major gripes with the way the photos have been put online. Firstly, someone should properly date the photographs. Some of the images are dated, but it’s not consistently done. Flickr has a ‘date taken‘ field and when tagged correctly, it’d make for a far richer experience. If they need volunteers to tag all this stuff, I’d sign up in a heartbeat!
Secondly, the size of the images displayed is just sad and this really irks me. While they contain sufficient detail, I really don’t see the point of just displaying a medium resolution image. These photographs are national treasures and the viewing public should have access to the glory of large sized images. That’s how it would have been if the photos were on display in a museum, wouldn’t it?