‘I take pictures of everything my child does’: Sonia Kruger on how ‘nosing’ is ruining family photos

The TV host muses that the lack of photos from her childhood may account for her love of getting in front of the camera – and how children have gained the upper hand when it comes to family photos.

Purple reign! Sonia Kruger. Picture: Getty Images

Growing up in Australia in the ’70s and ’80s meant family photos were captured on unsophisticated, sometimes disposable cameras by mostly unsophisticated photographers (i.e., us). The film took weeks to process and often resulted in the local pharmacy staff critiquing your pics before you even saw them – and in the era of “free love” that may have presented a delicate problem for some.

There were 24 – or, if you splurged, 36 – frames in total. So each shot had to be carefully considered, as opposed to today, when we can take 4000 shots of a salad in seconds to ensure we capture exactly the right angle and light, as if a casual single snap is all it took.

Pictures of my childhood are rare, and I blame my mother – everyone knows Mum is the designated documentarian and, as such, is destined to appear in very few photos herself.

It would appear it was a dereliction of her duty to properly record for history our holidays at Hervey/Rainbow/Bateau/(insert name here) Bay, so great swathes of a quintessential summer childhood are missing.

Sonia Kruger is red-y for her close up, as she writes in her latest column for Stellar. Picture: Getty Images

Being the middle child meant even fewer memories, as clearly the interest in having children had worn off by the time I arrived after my sister, only to be rekindled when my brother was born and the novelty of having a boy kicked the cameras into action again.

Maybe that’s why I chose the career I did, as some kind of deep-seated Freudian need to be validated through any type of lens I could find was sparked.

Except the paparazzi kind which, no matter how hard I try, always catches me at my worst: no make-up, messy hair, resting I’ve-just-been-told-I’m-about-to-be-audited face, taken at the most unflattering angle.

Call me crazy, but it’s almost like they do it on purpose to drive clickbait.

As a parent, I find I’m the other extreme to my parents’ generation. I take pictures of everything my child does: first steps, first Easter egg hunt, second Easter egg hunt … I’ve even taken pictures of her sleeping, which is borderline creepy. (Don’t worry, I’ve been massively told off about this – by her.) I don’t post all of these pictures, by the way, and I understand “sharenting” can be a problem, a potential infringement of children’s rights and, in the worst case scenario, a security issue.

None of us wants to put our child in harm’s way.

Our intentions are pure, but children today have pushed back.

They’ve even formed an organised revolution of sorts, ruining family photos with a technique dubbed “nosing”; the child covers their nose with a hand during group shots, rendering themselves unrecognisable while simultaneously pulling focus.

I think they’ve missed the key message, though, which is that we love them, are proud of them and desperately want to capture their beauty and the innocence of their youth before it slips away.

Somehow this has transpired into us deliberately wanting to cause acute embarrassment by posting cute pictures of them covered in Nutella for our own sadistic amusement.

These days, children don’t need their parents to act as documentarians as they can now fulfil that role themselves.

They are the kings and queens of selfies, filters and TikTok, and are more than happy to capture, control and curate their own images on pages that generally don’t include a single shot of a well-meaning proud parent.

Too few pictures of our childhood, too many of theirs. Maybe one day, we’ll strike the right balance.

But I need my memories to be tangible, so I can relive those moments in years to come, given I feel that I may be part of the category characterised by the quote: “Everyone has a photographic memory, some just don’t have the film.”

Sonia Kruger hosts The Voice and Dancing With The Stars on the Seven Network. Read Sonia’s full column in Stellar.

And listen to the latest episode of Something To Talk About below:

Originally published as ‘I take pictures of everything my child does’: Sonia Kruger on how ‘nosing’ is ruining family photos