Artist and designer Kelli Anderson has created a pop-up book that turns into a working 4×5 camera with a few cuts and folds of the paper. On her blog, Anderson explains:

“I wanted to make a working camera within an educational pop-up book—one that connects the dots between design and science / structure and function.”

 

 

So how does it work? The book doubles as a pinhole camera, a variation of a Camera obscura, a simple camera without a lens and a single, pinhole-sized aperture.

Wikipedia says it’s ‘effectively a light-proof box with a small hole in one side. Light from a scene passes through this single point and projects an inverted image on the opposite side of the box.’

 

 

 

 

The book comes with detailed instructions, a lightproof bag and a starter pack of photo paper. There’s no assembly but you will be required to pour ‘developer’ into a tray and slosh the photo paper around to create your image.

 

 

The project was supported in part by the Adobe Creative Residency (and produced in multiples by Structural Graphics).

 

 

You can buy the self-published book through Kelli’s website. You can see her art and design portfolio here. You should also read her blog, because she’s very open about her process and workflow.