The Century Camera

launching next Friday: a camera I've designed to take a hundred-year-long exposure, capturing gradual change in cities (and thereby holding developers accountable to the next generation). Next week a hundred of the cameras will be hidden throughout Berlin, to be retrieved in 2114.

The cameras use sheets of black paper in place of ordinary film. The pinhole focuses light on the black paper sheet, such that the paper fades most where the light is brightest, very slowly creating a unique positive image of the scene in front of the camera. "The photograph not only shows a location, but also shows how the place changes over time," Mr. Keats explains. "For instance an old apartment building torn down after a quarter century will show up only faintly, as if it were a ghost haunting the skyscraper that replaces it." ...

Participants will be free to hide their cameras anywhere in Berlin that they deem worthy of long-term clandestine observation, and they'll be expected to keep the location secret into old age. At that stage, the participant will reveal the location to a child, who in turn will be responsible for keeping the secret into adulthood, so that 100 years from now one person in the world will know where to retrieve each camera. Whoever brings a camera back to Team Titanic in 100 years will collect the 10-euro deposit, and the 100-year photo will be extracted from the sealed pinhole canister for inclusion in a special Team Titanic exhibition. The exhibit is scheduled to open on 16 May 2114.