Great news from Camera 159, it’s been to the South Pole!
The camera, which was created in Swansea, Wales back in Summer 2009, travelled to Greenland with Sally R, and was left at the local science base in Kangerlussuaq. We briefly heard about it possibly travelling further North in the July, but this week, we received a message from Paul T, who had the camera in Antarctica:
I was handed one of your cameras at a remote field camp called Sky-Blu at the base of the Antarctic Peninsula, whilst working for the British Antarctic Survey this summer. I took it with me on a project at the South Pole, and then returned with it to the British Base, Rothera. I was at the Pole working for the British Antarctic Survey on a GPS project. I work as a Field Assistant, and the other chap (goggles and green jacket) is Ian Potten, the pilot of the Twin Otter aircraft that took us there.
Paul sent us some photos from this trip to the Pole (the rest of which you can see on the camera page), and has since passed the camera on again:
I’ve handed it to a colleague who will take a couple of snaps then pass it on northwards. I took a couple of pics at the South Pole – apologies if there are a couple of spoiled pics, but it was -30c and my gloved fingers were awkward! I’d love to see the results of the developed film. Looks like this camera’s now been to the north and south ends of the earth.
This camera certainly holds the record for visiting the most extreme locations on our planet.
Thanks to Paul for getting in touch, and of course Sally and Sam for taking part in the project so far.
View the Camera 159 page for more images and the full update.
We’ve just had two cameras return home and the images have been posted – Camera 150, which travelled around the UK last year, and Camera 210 which made the journey from London to Australia and back. You can see both sets of images via the ‘Returned Images‘ section.
This brings us to 21 cameras which have returned, out of the current 265 cameras in almost 60 countries, which is just over a 12% return rate.
We’re approaching our 2nd birthday in April, when we’ll be doing a retrospective of the most interesting stories and journeys from the project to date.
Edvaldo wrote to us a few months back to tell us about an event he and his wife were planning:
I really appreciated your Disposable Memory Project and I would like to introduce you a similar project I and my wife Silvia are planning to run in Brazil.
We like the drift theory, where you keep yourself in a way that doesn’t have plan or maps but has borders and limits and follow the “natural” way, we have resolved to allow a camera to do it. We will have a Photograph event called “Paraty em Foco” (http://www.paratyemfoco.com) this is the biggest one in Brazil and we are going to use this opportunity to test this “camera drift”. The idea is to give cameras (disposable ones) to one person in the beginning of the day and request to pass to others during the day and at the end return to one specific place where we can get, like your project.
That was back in July, and last week Edvaldo wrote again to tell us how things went:
During this event we finally launched the Crônicas Visuais project (http://cronicasvisuais.org/). We started with 2 cameras, one fixed in a seat in the main place in Paraty (Praça da Matriz) and the second one made small “trip” cross the city.
Unfortunately the first one was robbed in the first day, we took some pictures and published in the blog. After it we took more care about the cameras. The first trip was made by a teenager that lives in the non touristic portion of the city, Betina shows us the day by day images. The second trip was very short, just in the best ice-cream shop in the city during the “international day of ice cream”, at least it was in Paraty and we saw a large line of students waiting for free ice cream, was funny to see the images at the same level of them, very short close to the tables.
After it, we gave a camera to the a volunteer in the asylum for older, we just posted it today in the site. Very emotional pictures showing us how these old people live there and the conditions they have.
We tried other camera in the place (praça da matriz), it was almost robbed again,, but this time we were able to recover it. This film was nice pictures from famous photographers … very funny. the last one made a trip in the hands of one visitor.
If you’re a Portuguese speaker, you can read much more about the event at http://cronicasvisuais.org/. We’ll also be adding the two cameras which we sent to Edvaldo from our project to the site in the coming days, and fingers crossed we’ll hear back from them soon.
Today’s post is from Matt Foote (of Camera 29, amongst others) who recently held an exhibition inspired by our project, during which he released a number of cameras for us:
Just a little (belated) update on the cameras released at the Gallery At The End Of The World during the course of the most recent exhibition.
It was at this show, from Sept. 3 to 6 ‘09, where we debuted the “Dollar’s Worth of Memories” disposable camera art series, part of which included a standard DMP camera bag tacked to the wall of our art space. We also launched a few other DMP cameras throughout the gallery.
Altogether, 4 cameras were successfully launched during the weekend. Of those, 2 were finished by gallery patrons and artists over the course of the 4 days; 1 was taken north to the San Francisco Bay area with the young son of one of the other artists; and the last one simply disappeared from the bag attached to the wall– we’re hoping it was taken by friend, not foe.
As to the bag attached to the wall– the experiment was to see how many people would “get it” and take the bag off the wall to see what mysteries it held. Whenever I removed it from the wall I was very careful to poke the tack through a pre-existing hole, so that I would could count how many different times it was removed from the wall over the course of the weekend. The answer is 7. Assuming they weren’t doing the same trick as I and tacking it back through an existing hole, we can surmise that 7 different people took it off the wall and hopefully snapped a few pics.
Interestingly, it turns out that on this same weekend, in the alley below the gallery, there was another exhibition dedicated to disposable cameras– some young lady had had the idea to give 100 disposable cameras (well, the photographers payed $25 each for the privilege of participating) with the intention of documenting the local town and community of Altadena, CA. Each of the hundred photographers had a little section that showed all their pics, and then the “best” pics were selected by committee and blown up to 8″x10″ and put up in another gallery around the corner.
The images from Camera 122 are finally online. The camera, originally dropped off in Las Vegas by Kirsty S. was handed over to Jean and Daniel during a Tom Jones concert at the MGM back in April of this year.
The camera then found its way back to Ontario, and into the hands of Karin A, who finished off the roll – or so we thought.
When the camera returned home, the manual winding wheel which allows you move the film on after each photograph had broken, so whilst it seemed like it wouldn’t wind on any more, I managed to fix the camera, and found there were a few shots left on the film, so I took a few images myself (would you believe I hadn’t actually taken any images for the project until that point!) around London.
We dropped the film in to be developed, and when we got the images back, all of the scans were offset and screwed up. Something was telling me this camera was jinxed. Fortunately, after some careful manual editing and retouching, we’ve managed to get the images online.
The camera has been travelling for 138 days, covered almost 2000 miles, 2 countries, and at least three people.
Thanks to everyone who took part in the camera – and if you recognise any of the locations, please comment and let us know. Interestingly – I think this is the first camera we’ve had back without a single person being photographed!
Despite a numberofcameras going to the V festival this year, we hadn’t yet managed to get a camera into the hands of a celebrity, until now! Chris C emailed us today to let us know that he released Camera 211 in to the hands of Suggs from Madness. Chris went on to say:
He may have left it lying on the grass when he went to perform his set. Anyway, if Suggs didn’t take a photo, he made up for it with a brilliant performance on stage.
And there’s proof in the photo above. Well Suggs, if you’re reading, do let us know what you do with the camera!
We were invited to talk about the Disposable Memory Project at a recent advertising industry event called ‘Game Changers’. It was the first time I’d been asked to present something about the project, and I had to fill 20 minutes, so apologies for the rambling, but hopefully you might find some of the background to the project interesting.
Our Cameras are in over 50 countries across the world – but now they’re travelling to the underworld too – Christy H. has written in to tell us about sending her camera to Hell. Hell, Michigan that is.
This weekend, I was invited to a bonfire in the tiny town of Hell, Michigan and decided that it would be a perfect place to drop a Disposable Memory Project camera.
Camera 207 was left in front of the Hell Country Store. Hell is located in Livingston County, about 15 miles from Ann Arbor. It does, in fact, “freeze over” each winter, which is a continual source of amusement. Nobody really knows how the town got its unusual name, but two theories persist:
1) It may be a shortened translation of a German phrase “So schon hell” — which the locals claim means “beautifully bright.”
2) The more popular legend is that George Reeves, who helped settle the area, was asked what he wanted to name the town. He replied “you can name it hell for all I care,” and the name stuck.
Whatever the town’s origins, you can now proudly say that a DMP camera has been through Hell. I just hope it makes it to Hell and BACK!
We hope the camera has more than a snowball’s chance of returning home – so if you’ve been through Hell recently – have a look for the camera, and maybe you’ll manage to snap a few devilish pictures (enough of the puns already!) Read more about Camera 207 at the camera page.
We’ve had an email from Matt Foote, of our very first camera to return home, telling us about an exhibition he’s put together after being involved in our project:
Having been directly inspired by the Disposable Memory Project, I am hanging a show of disposable camera photos at the September art show at the Gallery At The End Of The World.
Appropriate, as that is the gallery where I received my first DMP camera, which subsequently became the very first one to return home.
This show, specifically, was done using the very cheapest, flimsiest, “Dollar Store” cameras that I could find. No flash, no fancy gadgets. They’re so cheap, they’re housed in paperboard packaging instead of plastic. And the photo quality is generally just awful– murky and dodgy, almost like a pinhole camera. But with the right framing and light-oriented composition, they can produce beautiful, if rough, images.
We totally agree, the images from the cameras are wonderful and have a beautiful quality to them. If you’re in the Altadena area of California, do try and get to Matt’s show. He’ll also be releasing another camera for us there.
For the exhibit, I’m also going to launch a new camera by having the bag attached to my wall. We’ll see who has the stones to unpin the camera bag from the exhibition wall and walk away with it…
Summer is finally here-ish, and that means festival time. We’ve already had a couple of cameras go to Glastonbury and a number of festivals around the UK, but this weekend is the turn of the V Festival in Chelmsford and Staffordshire, and we’ll be there courtesy of @clara_bow, seen above talking to camera. Clare has the enviable (arguably) task of meeting a whole bunch of people at the V Festival, writing for the website, and she’s very kindly offered to take a bunch of cameras with her to give out to people over the weekend. There’s an outside chance we might even get some cams into the hands of genuine celebs!
If you’re planning on going to a festival this year, wherever you are in the world, why not take a camera with you, and hand it over to someone you don’t know. Great opportunity for some wonderful images!
We’ll keep you posted as to the whereabouts of the V Festival cameras as we hear about them being handed out.
