IKEA KNÄPPA CARDBOARD DIGITAL CAMERA

Posted on 2012-04-30

Designed by Jesper Kouthoofd, the recyclable camera is made out of one piece of folded cardboard which is secured by two plastic screws. A single circuit board holds all the electronics, camera sensor and integrated USB connector. There is a combined on/off and shutter button on the front – holding it down for a few seconds turns the KNÄPPA on or off and a “firm click” takes a photo.

The performance of the KNÄPPA isn’t likely to worry the likes of Nikon or Canon. It shoots decidedly lo-fi images (think a 2004 camera-phone) and IKEA jokes about the lack of functions in the promo video below – to use the “zoom function” you simply extend your arms, and “advanced image stabilization” involves resting the resting the camera on a chair.

Once 40 photos have been taken, users plug the 2.3 megapixel camera – billed as “the world’s cheapest digital camera” – into a USB port and transfer the images in the normal manner. Images can then be deleted from the camera by using a paperclip to press the delete button on the front for about five seconds.”

www.ikea.com

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BURKE + NORFOLK – PHOTOGRAPHS FROM AFGHANISTAN

Posted on 2012-04-30

In October 2010, Simon Norfolk began a series of new photographs in Afghanistan, which takes its cue from the work of nineteenth-century Irish photographer John Burke (c. 1843-1900). Burke was the first photographer to make pictures in Afghanistan. He accompanied British forces during the invasion that became the Second Anglo-Afghan War from 1878-1880, producing albums of prints for sale. Virtually unknown today, Burke was a precursor of the contemporary photo-journalist producing work that went beyond reportage. His images do not reinforce British colonial values, but allow for a critical and nuanced reading of the relationship between the British forces and their Afghan peers.

Simon Norfolk (b. 1963) is a landscape photographer whose work over the last ten years has been themed around a probing and stretching of the meaning of the word ‘battlefield’ in all its forms. Norfolk’s photographs re-imagine or respond to Burke’s Afghan war scenes in the context of the contemporary conflict. Conceived as a collaborative project with Burke across time, this body of work by Simon Norfolk is presented alongside John Burke’s images. Rather than artificially restaging Burke’s compositions exactly, Norfolk identified contemporary equivalents, researching and travelling to Burke’s vantage points and developing a digital equivalent of his collodion wet plate technique. Norfolk finds many of the original locations of Burke’s work and conveys modern parallels with their subject matter depicting soldiers, bomb-sites, tented communities, alongside images of contemporary culture such as internet cafés and radar stations.

Opposite – Kabul ‘Pizza Express’ Restaurant behind the Muncipal Bus depot (2011), Simon Norfolk

Exhibition runs through till June 30th, 2012

Crawford Art Gallery
Emmet Place
Cork
Ireland

www.crawfordartgallery.ie

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TIMOTHY H. O’SULLIVAN

Posted on 2012-04-30

The photographs made by Timothy H. O’Sullivan as part of the United States Geological Exploration of the Fortieth Parallel, or King Survey, comprise an iconic and richly varied body of work.

The first of the great post-Civil War Western expeditions, the King Survey was organized under the authority of the U.S. Army Topographical Engineers. Between 1867 and 1872, Clarence King, the geologist in charge, and his party studied a vast swath of terrain, approximately 100 by 800 miles, encompassing the path of the soon-to-be-completed transcontinental railroad, from the border of California eastward to Cheyenne, Wyoming.

In four seasons with King’s group – 1867, 1869 and 1872 – he created a diverse body of photographs: geological studies, landscapes, views of miners and mining operations, records of cities and settlements, studies of the survey itself and self-reflexive meditations on his own presence in the West.

Exhibition runs through till September 3rd, 2012

The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
4525 Oak Street
Kansas City
MO
64111

www.nelson-atkins.org

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