Calendar

The travelling camera is a mobile large-format studio. Bob Jones temporarily installs it in public spaces to take portraits of visitors and passers-by. The resulting portrait is developed in an improvised darkroom on site and handed over to the person photographed. This performative situation results in an unstable mediality: each of the analogue direct positives is unique. It cannot be reproduced and wanders uncontrollably from the place where it was taken, ending up on walls, in drawers or - digitised and often altered - on the Internet. The ownership of the photograph changes in the process in which the unique piece passes from the photographer to the person photographed. What remains are documentary fragments: hastily created smartphone shots, fixed incorrect exposures or nostalgic-looking screenshots of already virtualised images. As the photographer, Bob Jones inscribes herself in the various places where the pictures are taken - and in the materialised memories of the people she does not know. In addition to the virtual souvenirs of digital image origin, the haptic quality of the hand print creates a feeling of authenticity and evidential value: the memory becomes real by becoming tangible. In their timeless aesthetics and anachronistic form, the hand prints refer to the confrontation with one's own image and one's own temporality. The recording situation itself is reminiscent of the socio-historical and technological origins of the medium.

wanderkamera.com
@wanderkamera