100 cameras, 100 people, 100 ages: The 100

Picture from Camera 308 of the Disposable Memory Project

The creators of one my favourite collaborative photo projects, the Disposable Memory Project, have dreamed up and launched a new idea for 2012, and this one seems just as awesome. It's called The 100. 

The aim? To capture the a week in the lives of 100 people, aged between one and 100. By the end of the year, these snapshots of so many lives, from people of all different ages, scattered across the globe, will form a giant collage of life.

It's a little bit of social history documentation mixed with a smidge of creativity, which means that I love it. A lot.

Matthew Knight, the creator of the Disposable Memory Project, and his team are at the 'search' stage right now: they're looking for people who're interested in participating in the project. Unsurprisngly, the slots for people in their 30s are over-subscribed, whilst under-five and over-80 are a bit sparse. If you'd like to add your name to the list, or think that you know someone who might, head over to the website and sign up. You can be from anywhere, and definitely of any age!

The team isn't waiting for a full complement of 100 people to sign up before they send out their first cameras; they'll be doing that when they think that they have a fair enough spread to get started.

When participants have documented their lives with their disposable cameras, they'll return the camera to 100 HQ, where the film will be processed and the stories of their weeks, the snapshots of their lives, will be added to the project blog.

If you'd still like to get involved, but not necessarily by sharing a slice of your life with the project, you could always help out by donating a disposable camera to the cause, or by paying for some film processing. You can always spread the word, too, to complete the jigsaw of ages. 

Head over to The 100 to join in the fun and help create a canvas of life of all ages.

Book Crossing meets photography - the Disposable Memory Project

I’ve found my favourite photography project of the week, almost certainly of the month, and given that we’re almost in November, probably of the year, too.

Take a bundle of disposable cameras, leave them places across the globe, ask people to snap a picture or two before passing on the camera, and see – quite literally when (or if) the film is developed – where the camera travelled. It’s the Disposable Memory Project.

Matthew Knight dreamed up the idea back in 2008, when he was standing in a dry cleaners somewhere in the scary metropolis that’s London and spotted a cheap single use camera for sale. (Don’t tell me that you’ve not had an astonishing idea in a most incongruous place.) If he set one free with a message on it, a unique URL to enable its progress to be tracked, and a return address so that the film can be developed and uploaded to the project’s website, what would happen? It was a slow art project that fused analogue and digital and rather piqued his fancy. (And now mine, too, for that matter.)

A few years on, over 350 cameras have been released into the wild and 30 have made it home to date. They’ve visited 70 different countries, including the South Pole, Everest’s Base Camp, and the Gambia, and travelled over 440,000 miles, which is to the moon and back. Speaking of the moon, they’re hoping to get a camera into space at some point in the near future, so if anyone can help them out there, let them know!

The Disposable Memory Project has 1600 members, all of whom have been brought together by a randomly distributed camera and the marvel that’s the Intergoogles. If you’d like to send your own camera off on its journey, buy a disposable camera, and then head over to the Disposable Memory Project website for the instructions to generate a unique URL and a camera-leaving kit.

How long do they anticipate the project continuing? For as long as they can fund it, and disposable cameras remain available for purchase. I hope that’s a while yet. It’s a damn cool project and I’m off to leave a camera somewhere.

You can see more of the project’s pictures on the website, and you can follow their cameras’ adventures on Twitter as @FoundACam, too!