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As a concept, the Flutter-in Pinhole Camera is quite wonderful: a flat-pack pinhole camera that doubles as a postcard. But the sentiment behind the promotional spot is more than a little bit creepy.
“There are those people that suffer in the Third World,” reads the copy. “Why are we always just about to see their suffering? Even, they must have their own happiness. Now, we send the camera that can take the happiness of their life.”
You can’t afford a camera of your own, Africa. So we’ll send you a cardboard one. Then you send it back to us. So we can take the happiness of your life.
[via Gizmodo]
Aaahhh. So is the idea that they are supposed to take photos of happy events because somehow our photo correspondents keep missing them? So then we get happy African photos and what? We feel better about the whole thing? What do the Africans get? Do we send prints back to them? Creepy. I suppose we might imagine that Africans would like to improve their image abroad.
I think its a great idea. I don’t find this creepy at all. I mean if you find this creepy then what’s the difference between sending a cool neat pin hole camera made out of cardboard box to someone in Africa who can’t afford it and get half of it back from them or to send money to a child in need of money for food?? I mean yeah you get a picture of the kid your sponsoring but thats it. You can’t interact with them nor do you even know if the money is even heading to them. At least with this project, the African kids can interact with the person who sent the pin hole camera. And if you guys didn’t want the video close enough, the camera took TWO pictures and the pin hole camera gets cut in half, making TWO post card which one was sent back to Korea. So if you add everything up, they do get to keep a photo.