You Can Take Your Rage Out on Photography by Smashing a Camera to Pieces at New Exhibit
Like all hobbies, photography can have its frustrating moments. And now photographers can take out some of that rage by smashing a camera to pieces with a hammer.
The unusual exhibition, titled Camera Obsolete?, is being put on by Belfast Photo Festival in Northern Ireland. Participants can wield hammers in dedicated rage rooms or can more gently prise apart cameras in disassembly areas. If wanton destruction isn’t your speed, then visitors can instead adopt an old camera and return it to use by mending it.
If you’re confused about why this is happening, it’s all part of Belfast Photo Festival’s overall theme, which examines photography as a physical medium even as it moves into digital and AI-driven image culture. The demolition project confronts photography’s unstable future by asking what is being lost, remade, or abandoned.
“We live in a culture saturated with AI-generated and synthetic imagery. The question now is not simply what a photograph looks like, but who made it, what machine made it, and whether it can still be trusted,” says the festival’s Director of Development Toby Smith.
“Camera Obsolete? is designed to confront audiences with the pleasure, discomfort, and contradiction of destroying physical cameras, a choice many creatives now make silently and privately when choosing to prompt images instead of make them.”
Alongside the camera-smashing are exhibitions by photographers like Thaddé Comar, whose project ‘How Was Your Dream?’ addresses new forms of demonstration and insurrection in a documentary series created during the Hong Kong protests of 2019, and Vahram Aghasyan, whose project ‘Modality’ reflects on failed futures and the lingering presence of unrealised social ambition in a series capturing unfinished Soviet residences suspended in the Armenian landscape.
“We want people to experience photography in new and unexpected ways through accessible, free exhibitions across the city, whether that means gaining inspiration on a lunchtime break or engaging with our new participatory installation,” says the festival’s CEO, Michael Weir. “Belfast Photo Festival is committed to championing photography, homegrown artistic talent, and global voices alike.”
Belfast Photo Festival runs from June 4 to June 30 and is supported by Alexander Boyd Displays, Antrim and Newtownabbey Borough Council, Arts Council of Northern Ireland, Belfast Buildings Trust, Belfast City Council, the British Council, Belfast Festival of Learning, Belfast Exposed, Photo Museum Ireland, Pro Helvetia, the Swiss Cultural Fund UK, and Ulster Museum.
Image credits: Courtesy of Belfast Photo Festival
