the disposable memory project

Camera 73 has returned from Frankfurt, full of images which are now online. Originally left in the Main Cafe by Hanna R, the camera didn’t move around a great deal, as Nina R found it almost complete in the same location. It goes to show that you don’t need to move around to get great images!

Thanks to everyone who took part in this camera. If you know the people who feature in the images, let us know, and we’ll update the site!

Monika A. has emailed to tell us a bit more about her Camera 93, which later this week will be making the mammoth journey to an Everest Basecamp in Nepal. We asked her about the trip she is making.

The Project: So where is the camera currently?

Monika A: Burgdorf near Hanover, Germany

DMP: And why are you going to Everest?

Monika: Generally I am very interested in foreign countries, their landscape and the people who live there. That’s why I love to travel.
Nepal – and especially the himalayas – is a destination that on the one hand I always wanted to visit – on the other hand I wasn’t sure if I would ever manage to get there.

When Jon and Chris (my significant other) decided to organize a trek to Everest Base Camp in Nepal as a photography and videography workshop it was clear for me that this would my opportunity to be part of a unique experience.

Did I mention that I am very passionate about photography? This journey is a great chance to combine both hobbies as the trek will offer the environment to take all kinds (and lots!!) of photographs. I am really looking forward to receiving many many new impressions, which may also push my photography to a new level.

DMP: How can we follow your journey?

Monika: You can get trek updates (on a probably daily basis) on http://netvibes.com/everesttrek

DMP: We’ll be following you closely, and best of luck!

Monika: Thanks – keep your fingers crossed that I don’t get altitude sick

You can read more about the project at http://www.everesttrek2009.com/ and of course, we’ll be charting its progress on our own Camera 93 page.

Good luck to Monika and the rest of the team. This may be our most amazing camera drop yet!

Our recent drop of Camera 88 in Austin, Texas has created a flurry of activity, and is about to return home. Dan A. found the camera on the same day it was dropped, and took it on to a party just a short distance away, where he handed it over to Cassie F. Both checked in with us, and told us about the cameras.

Dan said:

Me and a friend luckily were on our way to the annual Eeyore’s Birthday celebration at Pease Park which I was sure would make for some EXTREMELY interesting photographs!!

Cassie agreed:

Dan came up to me and my friend at Eeyore’s birthday to take a picture of us (we were painted head to toe in silver and gold paint)

Interesting indeed, and if the images on Flickr of the Eeyore’s Birthday festival in Austin are anything to go by, they certainly will be great pictures – check out some of the festivities here – http://www.flickr.com/photos/birzer/sets/72157617230826287/

Mark S., who originally dropped the camera, is also an amazingly talented photographer, and some of his work can be seen at his photoblog – http://londonrubbish.com/

Thanks to Dan, Cassie and Mark for being involved in this camera.

Andrew G. of has commented on some of his images from Camera 38:

Really like some of the pictures I took. Particularly the little girl with the mirror at the orphanage. She was such a happy little soul, despite her parents dying in a house fire some weeks earlier.

One of the most interesting aspects of the project is the story behind the images. Whilst the film we get back is wonderful in itself, the characters and places they have visited are the really interesting aspect of the concept. The site currently doesn’t allow you or the photographers to explain the stories behind the images, and that’s something we’re looking to change as soon as possible, but in the meantime, we’ll be featuring what we know about the images via the blog.

We’d love to hear from you, if you took any photos about who feature in the images, where you took the photo, and any stories from the cameras’ journey. Let us help turn the disposable into lasting documentary.

We’re rapidly approaching 100 cameras! We’ve had a bunch of cameras released over the last week:

Camera 91 and Camera 90 in Taunton, UK
Camera 89 in San Francisco, USA along with a wonderful image of the Golden Gate bridge (pictured above!)
Camera 88 in Austin, TX
Camera 87 released in London, but has found its way to Barcelona
Camera 86 handed over in Glasgow, Scotland
Camera 85 released in Morro Bay, CA
Camera 84 released in London, but taken to San Francisco
Camera 83 handed over in Nottingham and winging its way to New York

Graham K, who dropped the Taunton and Nottingham cameras is currently travelling around Devon and Cornwall with a handful of cameras ready to leave, so we’ll be tracking his journey via the site. Kirsty S is currently in California, and has told us she’ll be dropping some cameras over the next week or so, and we have word of trips to South Africa, Canada and Japan from some of our community – so lots of interesting drops coming up.

Who will hit the magic Camera 100? Watch this space!

We’ve had a sudden rush of new cameras recently – you can see them all on the Track page, but 12 new drops since our last update post.

Three cameras have gone out in Denmark thanks to Thorir I., two released in London by the Project , one was handed over in Montenegro thanks to Peter H., and three in Glasgow thanks to Jon C.

Also, we made a mistake and managed to miss a camera which was released by Charlotte of Photo360 magazine back in January in Hastings, UK – we added this as Camera 74 – sorry!

And Camera 73 which was released on April 9th by Hanna R. in Frankfurt has been found and returned already – we’re waiting for it to come home via the post, but fingers crossed we’ll have some images for that online in the next week or so.

The images from Camera 38 are now online available for viewing. This camera is our fourth to be returned, as contains a mix of images from North London (see Archway Kebabs above!) to Cambodia, courtesy of Andrew G, who sent us this back.

The camera, in our reckoning has travelled 12,600 miles, so it has weathered well considering its journey. You can, as ever, see all of the images on the camera page, as well as our flickr group – where we’d love to hear your comments on the images, especially if you’re featured in any of them!

As we have cameras in over 23 countries across the world, we’re in the process of adding multi-lingual pages to the site, so if someone finds a camera, but English isn’t their first language, they are still able to understand the concept of the project.

We’ve just put the German page online at: http://disposablememoryproject.org/found-de.html, with massive thanks to Angelika for providing the translated version.

We’ve had offers of help for Italian, French and Spanish, but we would like to have a page in the language of each country we’ve released cameras. That includes Chinese, Thai, Greek, Portugese, Japanese, Swedish, Turkish and Romanian! If you speak one of these languages, and would like to help out the project, please drop us an email or twitter.

In case you didn’t catch it, here is the interview with the Disposable Memory Project from last night’s BBC Radio 5 Live Pods and Blogs show.

Thanks to Jamilliah Knowles for getting in touch with us and arranging the interview.

We’re live on the wireless tonight at 2.30am – well, its not live actually, but an interview we had with Jamilliah Knowles last week which will be featured as part of the ‘Up all night’ show. Not to worry if you can’t face staying up all night, we’ll be sharing the podcast – Pods and Blogs – once it has been uploaded.