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.

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!

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

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…

Contact us or the Gallery for more details on the show http://www.galleryattheendoftheworld.com

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

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.

After just 32 days travelling around Japan and China, Camera 184 has returned home with a collection of images from Asia.

Originally released and left in Narita Airport, Japan by Michael N. in July 2009.
After travelling via Taiwan, the cameras came to China ending up with Ava who took photos, including the new Chinese Expo building.

Thanks to everyone involved, and the fantastic images can be found on the Camera 184 page.