This Book is a Camera

This Book is a Camera is exactly what its title suggests: a camera. It’s a pop-up book, too, but it mostly turns into a fully functional pinhole camera. It serves as a fun and educational way to learn about the basic principles of light while also making your own photographs. The book concisely explains—while actively demonstrating—how a structure as humble as a folded piece of paper can tap into the intrinsic properties of light to produce a photograph. Easily turn a bathroom or closet in your home into a darkroom and process photos using household supplies (baking soda, instant coffee and water). Your photos will cast your modern life in the warm analog glow of 1840s technology. The book includes a piece of paper folded into a working 4×5" camera, a lightproof bag, five sheets of photo-paper “film,” development instructions, a companion lightmeter app for iPhone and Android, and a satisfying demonstration of the connection between design & science/structure & function. Originally published by the Museum of Modern Art in 2015, eleven years later it joins the family of K. Small publications.