One City Left

A few months ago, Noah came up to me and said, "I know someone doing a project that you would love."

He was right, this was perfect. I met Kevin (from Given Collective) on a particularly freezing day, and he told me about his project over breakfast. I don't know if it had a name at the time, but here is what happened. He had been distributing disposable cameras all over the world with the brief, "Your city." After finishing the roll, everyone was to mail the cameras back to him and the images would go on a web site.

That's all I knew when I started taking the camera everywhere with me. It was interesting to have a specific thought in mind when deciding what to take a picture of (kind of like the Dietribes thing); I would ask, "Does this represent what I think /feel of New York?" instead of "Oh neat, I have to take a picture of that."



The concept ended up being even cooler than I thought! Check out Kevin's opening statement of ONE CITY LEFT:

“One City Left” started simply as a project examining how individuals capture “their city” using only a disposable camera. When keeping equipment minimal and uniform, personal perspective becomes paramount, creating different interpretations of similar subject matter.

One City Left is a project about its participants: documenting their culture, places, and experiences. These images are more than just pictures of cities; they are pictures of someone’s city, and how they view, experience, and live in it.

Ten people's photographs tell the story of five cities: Edmonton, Montreal, New York, San Francisco and Vancouver.


I had forgotten how great disposable cameras can make things look - not perfect like a DSLR or pixelated like a low megapixel digital camera. There's a graininess about the pictures that I had forgotten all about (I think the last time I used a disposable was during my 11th grade trip to Islands of Adventure).



What else - it shows how people living in the same city can view it completely differently and love very distinct things about it. For example: I got to share the New York section with my friend Heron, who took an amazing set of pictures that was quite different from my own. Check his out and see what I mean. This adds another dimension to something I started exploring a few years ago with Fotoprojekt, which looked at the different ways people from two different cultures interpret the same word.

Visit ONE CITY LEFT and check out all the pictures, there are some really beautiful shots in there. Thanks for this opportunity, Kevin! Now it's your turn to shoot a roll.