Snap Spectacles Boston

See Boston’s history come alive through Snap Spectacles.

Spectacles: Boston is an augmented reality storytelling project created for Snap Inc.’s Lens Fest 2021, developed in collaboration with Hashtag Our Stories to explore the future of travel through the Next Generation Snap Spectacles. Expanding on earlier work, the series layers historic images from the Library of Congress with real time spatial overlays to reveal Boston’s past directly over the city streets. One lens features the story of Kathrine Switzer, the first woman to officially run the Boston Marathon: you stand on the spot in Framingham where officials tried to rip off her bib and hear the moment in her own words as archival photos animate around you. The other two lenses let users walk through time at Boston Common and Quincy Market, stepping inside century-old photographs while listening to original poetry by Boston Youth Poet Kevin Gu. By blending history, place, and emerging AR technology, the project creates an immersive bridge between the people who lived these moments and the ones standing there now.