Is the Camera Obsolete?

The team will guide visitors through the exhibition and explain how the work developed, from concept to public programme. Attendees will also have the chance to take part in a taster session of the DESTROY, DISMANTLE or RECAST activities.

'Camera Obsolete?' is a participatory installation and major public exhibition confronting the collapse of photography’s mechanical era. Conceived and produced by Belfast Photo Festival, audiences are invited to destroy, dismantle, recast or resist the transformation of obsolete cameras into new sculptural forms.  Part participation, part spectacle and part material transformation, the exhibition forces questions of authorship, truth and the erosion of photography as a physical, tangible medium.

Participants can wield hammers in dedicated rage rooms or use precise tools to prise apart equipment in bespoke disassembly areas. Bring your own camera or choose one of the hundreds available on display. Everyone is invited to gather, sort and rework the mechanical fragments into new sculptural forms. The resulting objects will remain on display throughout the exhibition and will ultimately inform a permanent public sculpture for Belfast Botanic Gardens. Alternatively, visitors can choose resistance over destruction by adopting an old camera and returning it to use, asserting the continuing value of photography as a physical medium in an increasingly synthetic image culture.

'Camera Obsolete?' reframes photography’s transition not as quiet decline, but as a charged, creative and public act. It marks a moment in the medium’s evolution and mechanical history, inviting audiences to engage directly with what is being remade and reimagined. As image-making enters an algorithmic and AI-driven age, choose to question, confront, create or simply watch.

Please note that closed-toe shoes are required to take part in the activities. All participants must sign a waiver on arrival in order to join the taster sessions.

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Host or Publisher Belfast Photo Festival