the disposable memory project

We’ve had a recent flurry of finished camera across the globe:

Camera 250 – finished in Pahang, Malaysia on December 8, 2009
Camera 249 – finished in Louisiana, USA on May 13, 2010
Camera 235 – finished in Singapore, Singapore on April 3, 2010
Camera 159 – finished in West Cork, Ireland on May 1, 2010
Camera 110 – finished in Florida, USA on June 7, 2010

As you can see, we’re still waiting on some to come home (some times it takes a while for them to get back to us in the UK!), and others have only just been finished, but in all cases, we’re really excited about getting these images online – especially Camera 159, which is our star North/Sole Pole explorer!

If you’ve got a camera in your hands, which you’ve finished, or just need to pass on, remember to drop us a line, and we’ll keep track of it.

If you’d like to help out the Project, by offering yourself as a local address where people can send completed cameras (which helps keep the cost of people sending cameras home as low as possible), drop us an email with where you live and we’ll send you details on being a local DMP office!

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.

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.

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.

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.

We’ve passed a milestone today, in that the project is one year old.

Happy birthday!

To celebrate, I thought we’d cover some of the statistics from the project.

But wait! As if the camera gods are sending us a celebratory birthday present (somewhat like last year’s xmas present!), we received this email from Nina R. in Frankfurt this evening:

we found one and finished it. What to do next?

I imagine this is Camera 73, but we shall wait for a more detailed response and let you know.

Not bad for our first twelve months. Thanks to everyone who has been involved, and as Jon C (of Camera 65, 66, 67, 68, 69 and 70) tweeted:

@foundacam Happy birthday. May there be many more years of Disposable Memory

A bumper update for you today, so lets start from the top

Camera 54 and Camera 55: Dropped off in Peckham, London, along with a couple of shots of the drop.

Camera 56 was left in the bar at the Shaston Arms near Carnaby Street, London by me.

Camera 57 was handed over to Lea S after I met her in the Slaughtered Lamb near Clerkenwell, London. The camera has already been passed on and is making its way to Brazil!

Camera 58 has been dropped off in Bucharest, Romania by Dominique P, who also dropped off one of the really early cameras in Germany.

Updates from existing cameras which are moving around:

Camera 53: Dropped off by Jason T back in February, has been found by Rebecca, who picked it up from its original location in Cookeville TN, USA

And returning home..

Camera 47 is winging its way back to us. Linda G, wrote to us and said:

It started in London then took it to Thailand and Cambodia and back to Cornwall. Looks as if these are the in places to visit this year.

Clearly, our cameras are in the hottest locations in the world!

An update from two cameras today, Camera 47 and Camera 38:

Camera 47 has checked in after travelling around 12,500 miles already on its journey. Nicky G of Monster Munch has sent us this update:

the camera is back from thailand. it went to cambodia too, and around with one of the local tour guides to some villages. there were a few stories i heard. i’ll find out the details! it’s back in cornwall..

My mum had a brilliant time with the camera. She said it was great having a little project to do, and she met loads of people doing it. My dad got accosted by a lady boy in cambodia. I wish they’d given him the camera! haha

Wonderful stories from this camera already… although I’m not sure how I’ll explain some of the images when they get developed to the people at the photo lab!

Completely coincidentally, Camera 38, which was originally left in London at the bar downstairs at the Great Queen Street restaurant has also been to Asia. Andrew G who found the camera in London gave us this update:

I took a few shots in london and then I decided to take it with me to cambodia where I’ve finished off the roll. Will post it off when I get back later in the month. Hope the camera can stand the heat.

Thanks for the updates guys, and looking forward to seeing the images!

We’ve had some great news today, Ada V sent us a couple of emails, firstly to say she’d found Camera 22:

I found camera pico2 in the townhall of Heemstede.
I took some photographs from the ladies i work with
Even one off them had her birthday at that time!

and then, pretty soon after, upon realising the camera was all finished, she contacted us again to find out how to get the camera home. Fingers crossed, we’ll have the camera back in a few weeks, and we’ll develop the images and share them.

This camera started its life in a classic fashion as a ‘true’ drop, left in the main auditorium at the Picnic 08 conference in the Westerpark, Amsterdam. Some months after, it was picked up and moved to Haarlem by H.M. After this, the camera apparantly made its way to Rotterdam, and then back Haarlem, to Eliane W. who found the camera in her office having it passed over by one of her clients. The camera then found its way south to Heemstede, where Ada V. found it in the Town Hall. Ada, of course, then sent the camera back to us for processing.

You can see its journey on the Camera Tracker page for Camera 22, and we’ll be posting the images up there when we have them developed.

http://disposablememoryproject.org/cameras/camera22.html