the disposable memory project

The Disposable Memory Project will be four years old in April, and by that point we’ll have released over 400 cameras.
Since the start of the project, we’ve so far had 30 cameras return home, and many more found, but still missing in action.
However, there are a handful of cameras which we know were finished, but never got sent home.

Camera 353 / finished in Virginia, USA on Nov 8th, 2011
Camera 250 / finished in Pahang, Malaysia on Dec 8th, 2009
Camera 249 / finished in Louisiana, USA on May 13th, 2010
Camera 188 / finished in Bangkok, Thailand on Dec 6th, 2011

It’s really sad to think that these cameras had their films finished, and in some of their cases, travelled thousands of miles, only to go missing at the last hurdle. Sometimes, people tell us they have a camera, and then don’t respond when we ask them to send it home. Others tell us they’re going to send it home, but then for whatever reason, they just never get sent.

We try and make it as easy as possible for people to get the cameras home, but sometimes, it doesn’t work.

We’re always looking for ways of simplifying the process of getting cameras back to us. It doesn’t look like there is any form of international ‘freepost’, where people can just label up the camera, and we pay for it upon its arrival. I’m going to start investigating whether international couriers like DHL and UPS can offer this, but as a non-funded project, it could be expensive.

If you have any suggestions on how to help people get cameras home, do drop us a line.
And of course, if you have a camera, please get in touch, and we’ll do everything we can to help you get it home!

UPDATE: Camera 188 has now been returned! Thanks to Xavier for getting this one home.

We were delighted to be asked for an interview by Bryony Young recently, a student of Journalism at University College Falmouth. Bryony has kindly let us reproduce her article here for the blog.

One day Matthew Knight caught sight of a disposable camera whilst waiting for his dry cleaning, three years on, 65 countries and 300 cameras later, testifies that every picture tells a story.

During his wait, an idea came to Matthew, to leave the camera from the dry cleaning shop in the hands of the general public, in a hope they would pick it up and start taking photographs. The camera then would be shared around the general public and an email address was stuck to the camera to view the images online, once they had been developed.

Matthew encouraged his friends to find the camera and before he knew it, his friends dropped cameras, in Edinburgh, Berlin and then, San Francisco. “ A silly idea that took me about 30 minutes to think about has now turned into thedisposablememoryproject.org, thanks to collaborative nature of the project and the community that it encompasses,” says Matthew. People have now dropped more than 300 cameras in around 65 countries. The most extreme on Mount Everest and the South Pole but more commonly in cafes, urban parks and benches, train stations and airports.

Matthew enjoys the waiting game of not knowing where the cameras has travelled, “The beauty of it is having to wait for the film to arrive back for processing, it becomes so exciting as you do not know where it has been in the world, or what paths it has crossed,” he says. It is not until the camera has returned back to the lab that Matthew knows about the previous location of a camera. So far only 26 cameras have been successfully returned and a few have got lost but overall, the project has produced some fantastic stories.

Matthew thinks the idea is appealing because people aspire to travel to experience different cultures and types of people. “This project taps into that ideal by giving you a random insight into that place,” he says. A photo from Sri Lanka of an orphaned girl holding a mirror smiling is just one of the images that has been successfully developed. Matthew was contacted randomly by the author of that photo. He said that her parents had died in a house fire, just two days before. Yet she was still smiling for the camera. “The stories beyond the camera are becoming most interesting as they tell you more about the images and about the different cultures around the world,” he added.

It is through stories like this that, the disposable memory project has created a small online community of photographers and like minded people. Matthew admits that there are a few lomography fans, who are overall keeping the project alive and inspiring others to take part.

Overall anyone can join in, “It is all about people doing creative projects themselves, taking part for the love of photography, people don’t play enough these days and it is exciting when you find a camera,” he continued.

The future of the project has huge potential a community based gallery seems the most obvious idea, “ I would love to find the time to create an event that involves as many people as possible,” he says. For example, buy 100 cameras, hand them out to students, creative freelancers, celebrities, all walks of life and encourage them to take photos. Then auction the completed images off for charity or something similar. At the same time showcasing all the archive in a gallery space to inspire and give promotion to the project.

The future looks snappy happy.

Thanks to Bryony. You can visit her blog at: http://bryonyiow.blogspot.com/

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.

Matt Knight, The Disposable Memory Project, “Game Changers: Free” from The IPA on Vimeo.

We’re approaching our big milestone of 200 cameras being released, and to celebrate, we’ll be giving a little prize to the person who drops our 200th camera.

If you’ve already got a camera code and haven’t dropped a camera yet, now is a perfect time to do it.
If you’ve not got a camera code yet, sign up here, and we’ll send you instructions on how to create your own camera drop.

The rules are pretty simple to enter:
1. Create a camera and drop it somewhere / hand it over to someone else
2. Take a photo of your drop/handover
3. Email us with details of the camera, and if you’re the 200th to be posted on the site – you’ll win!

The prize is something in keeping with the project, and just a way of saying thanks for helping us reach our 200th Camera dropped. We’ll be posting a longer blog entry at 200 with a review of the project to date.

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!

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

You may have noticed that we’ve had a little tidy up around here, and redesigned the site. We felt that the old design wasn’t doing justice to the wonderful images we have back from the three cameras returned, so the digital elves toiled night and day to create this vision you see before you.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on the new site, but we don’t have commenting setup properly yet – so please drop us an email (details are on the contact page), in our facebook group, flickr group or send us a message on twitter. We’re all over the internets!

In other news, the project is going on holiday next week, hand delivering some cameras to south america, so apologies if you write to us and don’t hear back for a little while!

Camera 29:018_2, originally uploaded by Disposable Memory Project.

Whoo! The images from our very first camera to be returned are now online in the flickr group: http://www.flickr.com/photos/disposablememoryproject/sets/72157612468305465/

Thanks to Melanie for creating the camera, and BlazeNFoote for sending it back, as well as everyone who featured in the images. We’ll be making more of the images on the Camera 29 page in due course.

If you took any of the photos, or appear in them, or can even help us identify location, email us, or comment on the images in flickr or below, and we’ll update the images to help tell their story.

Video Blog above, but for those of you who can’t see the video, here’s the text only version.
First of all, some updates on new cameras being sent out in to the wild:

Camera 25, which brings us up to our quarter century, was given out over a meal of Ox Heart and Snails in East Dulwich on Wednesday night to Amy T.

Camera 26 was handed over to Simon A, after I met him at the Spectator dinner for a charity I’m involved in.

Camera 27 was a DIY camera bag created by Barry D in Liverpool, and has been hand-carried to Barcelona and dropped off at the Sagrada Familia. We’re awaiting more news on the drop off point.

In other news, we’re changed the instructions on the cards included in the camera bags, as well as on the cameras. The new wording attempts to bring people to the website if they find a camera, so more emphasis on letting us know where you’ve found cameras. Hopefully this will make more people respond when they find a camera. We’ve also made each URL on the camera unique, so we can get an idea if people are visiting the site, but not telling us, so at least we know our little disposables have found a new owner. If you are creating your own camera bags, don’t forget to tell us, so we can give you a unique code, so you’re able put this on your camera and make the most of the new tracking.

And finally (always the light hearted story), we’ve been blogged about by the lovely people at moo.com, who think our project is right up their street. Yay! to use a moo phrase. We love moo, and use them for the postcards you’ll find with the cameras – but also now we have lovely Disposable Memory Project stickers containing our kinda logo thingy – a play on the Keep Britain Tidy man, but ours is tossing away a camera. I’ll be putting a handful of stickers in each camera bag, so feel free to plaster yourself with them.

PB300140, originally uploaded by nhhk.

Nick H (owner of our most well travelled camera) has told us about his second drop:

It’s been to Cebu in the Philippines and the two attached photos of the
camera were taken there.

I’ve passed it on now to people leaving HK today so I’m not sure where it
is. 3 pictures had been taken by the time I handed it over.

All the photos from of this camera are up at flickr, and we’ll be creating the camera page later today.