the disposable memory project

More details on the journey of the camera that could.. Camera 159, our arctic explorer.
Sam has written in to tell us about his part in its journey:

I picked up the camera at a lakeside camp on the Greenland Ice Sheet from Sally Reid. It then travelled with me to Greenland’s second largest town, Sisimuit, by foot, canoe and a small hitch on a quad bike. In Sisimuit I joined a sailing boat bound north and explored the fjords and outlet glaciers surrounding Illullsiat and Ummannaq whilst carrying out glacio-oceanographic research with an international team of scientists and climbers. The camera came with me on two climbing trips. One on Ummannaq Island and the other up a 2280 m mountain – likely the highest in the area and to be aptly named the Greenlandic translation of ‘the peak of clearing clouds’. In September, Camera159 returned to Kangerlussuaq and back on to the Ice Sheet; now cold, and frozen whilst we over-wintered our instruments. Following this it headed South – to the Antarctic Peninsula, as part of a research project on Rutford Ice Stream. Here, I passed the camera on to a lad called Mike Stainer who was escorting Winnie the Pooh around on a guided tour in a large, red plane. I look forward to seeing the photos developed.

Neither can we! Thanks for the update Sam.

After 293 days in the wild, Camera 114 has returned home with 23 images from the West Coast of the USA.

Originally dropped by Kirsty S, who is clearly our most gifted dropper with an amazing percentage of her cameras coming home, the camera started life in the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. Thanks to Jenna W for returning the camera, and Melanie for helping it get home.

If you’re featured in any of the images, or recognise the locations, please comment on the camera page, so we can build up a story of its journey.

Matt V.T. has been handed Camera 159, which travelled from Greenland to the South Pole. He’s given us a little more background to the camera’s journey to date:

To update the story of this camera a little – Sam D. (if the surname is Doyle) passed the camera to Mike S. (Stainer) – one of this years wintering mechs at R.A.B.I.D (Rothera Area Base of Ice Drilling). This is a deep field depot site (78° 09′S 83° 53′W) supporting flying operations further South. He took a photo there and then took it back to Sky Blu (an blue ice runway deep field site 74° 09′S 71° 34′W) where he took a further photo and bought it back to Rothera. It was passed to Toddy who took it to the pole and it was then given to me on his return.

Matt told us about what he did with the camera too:

I have taken a couple of photos, one of our main building and one of a Skua chick during a monitoring survey of breeding Skua on the point. (photo attached taken by Keith Waddell, a base assistant, of the camera in use). I have now given it to Celine, who has just completed a year as meteorologist on base. She left Rothera this morning with the camera and is heading North to travel through Chile and Peru. With any luck – the camera should find its way back to you at some point – and it would be really good to see some of the photos on this well travelled camera!!

Thanks for the update Matt – and we’re looking forward to hearing from Celine.
You can see the complete history of the camera at the Camera 159 page.

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.

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!

View the Camera 122 images.

Despite a number of cameras 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!

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.

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.

Update: The cameras were released at the Artist Dressing Room compound by Clare. Fingers crossed for them being picked up and us hearing back from the snap happy celebs! Check out Clare interviewing some of the more confused festival goers.

See the camera pages at:

Camera 195
Camera 196
Camera 197