An Open Invite to MobFORMAT: The Press

An Invitation to Submit to MobFORMAT: The Press. 

The First Ever Mobile Photo Printing Press.

Surrounded by mobile photos at MobFORMAT: The Press

Hi Juxters, I’d like to invite you all to join in with my MobFORMAT: The Press project as part of FORMAT International Photography Festival.

First a bit of background, I’ve been based in Derby, UK for the past month developing the world’s first mobile photo printing press.  With the help of FORMAT and EyeEm we’ve managed to put a large format printer into an old Chocolate Factory packing room.  In this space we’re printing EVERY photo that we receive on the three exhibition themes.

Exhibition volunteers are individually cutting the thousands of photos being printed

The first theme The Press – Work ended yesterday and received over 2,600 photos from 850 photographers. We’ve printed over 90% of these photos already, cutting them one by one and putting them in old developing trays sourced from Winters Photo Studio (the oldest in the UK).

Over the course of the month long festival visitors will be sorting through the photos in the trays and deciding which ones they want to stick on the wall – curating together an ever evolving exhibition.  While I haven’t counted them all, I think that that there are well over 1,000 photos already stuck up in the factory.  There are photos stuck to the doors, the glass, the floor, even my seat.  The most exciting thing is seeing people consciously engage with the curation process, forming sub-themes and visual conversations between the photographs.  My favourite part of the exhibition is a small series of street vendor photographs that can be found in the far-right corner of the space.

Here you can see the selection process in action.  Some people choose one, others a few.

All kinds of visitors are joining in the selection process, the most engaged have been the younger generation who are not only quick to jump into the stack of photos but also download EyeEm and document the process, uploading the photos back into The MobFORMAT themes.

Photographs are all selected and stuck to the wall by exhibition visitors

A visitor juggles her iPhone and wallpaper roller used to help the sticking process.

I’m here for another three and a bit weeks and hope to get even more photos so that we can fill the space floor to ceiling.  I’d really love the JUXT community to join in the exhibition by uploading their photos to the most recent theme The Press – Treasure.  The Treasure theme is an exploration in what people value in their lives and how they reward themselves. To find out more about the theme please check out this article on the EyeEm blog.

Photo by Victor F Masip on EyeEm

You can also see a quick video of me being interviewed in the space on opening night below.

Misho

*Editors Note:  Juxt wants to welcome Misho to the Juxt(er)s! He is a welcome addition to a great community of contributors.