Near the end of March, I placed disposable cameras around my area with the sign above asking people to look around and take a photo of something interesting. After retrieving the cameras and having them developed, I scanned them into the computer in order to manipulate them into abstracted digital collages. My original intent was to make the collages very quickly and later turn them into oil paintings, but as I spent more time on the series I felt the collages stood well enough on their own. When I have created this sort collage work in the past, I selected my own imagery and therefore I had some idea of the final result from beginning to end. With this project however, the images were completely random and I had no idea what I would get back from the people taking photos. This made the process a whole new level of challenging for me. Though I had to spend a far greater amount of time per collage, the end results have been very satisfactory.
Below are the collages created so far with a link to the resource photos under each.
Collage One Images: http://imgur.com/a/DNjFe
Collage Two Images: http://imgur.com/a/MlQLs
Collage Three Images: http://imgur.com/a/YPTD5
Collage Four Images: http://imgur.com/a/WJAX2
Collage Five Images: http://imgur.com/a/X2Q8k
The images from my other camera which have yet to be turned into collages can be found here: http://imgur.com/a/Ct6V2
One of the most interesting things for me during this project was looking through the photographs and trying to imagine the person behind the camera and their reactions to coming across a free to use disposable. There is an interesting element of mystery for both parties involved. I have no idea who was behind each camera and as far as I know, the photographers don't know me either. A part of me wishes I could have had a hidden camera to see the public's reactions, but the mystery of the process has it's own appeal as well.
