Timelapses? Yeah, they’re on the right side of groovy. But you’re lucky if they show more than a few months of activity. What you need is a more hardcore approach — forget about taking photos over hours or days, try a single exposure over a century.
Later this month in Berlin, artist Jonathon Keats will be offering “century cameras” to anyone willing to part with €10 ($14.69), as PetaPixel’s Michael Zhang reports. Those who pick one up will then have to hide it somewhere in the German capital and only reveal its location in 2114.
Of course, this will be a somewhat tricky proposition given the average lifespan of humans, so passing the information on later in life to a more sprightly individual is highly recommended.
The cameras are designed to be simple pinhole shooters — the philosophy being the less complex the better. A black tab prevents the film from being exposed, so “activating” the thing is as straightforward as pulling off the tab.
Clearly it’s a neat idea, but it has a lot working against it — accidental discovery by the uninformed, failure of the camera / film and overexposure into a white mess of nothing, to name a few.
If you’re wondering what the photos may eventually resemble, check out these shots by Michael Wesely of Berlin’s Potsdamer Platz and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, captured over a period of a few years. If they look anything like this, it’ll be well worth the effort… even if we’ll never see them.
Photo: Team Titanic