Real World Images – Taken By Real People, In Real-time

Real World Images – Taken By Real People, In Real-time

On Tuesday May 15th 2012, the Aday.org (www.aday.org) initiative will invite the entire world to participate in the largest and most comprehensive photographic documentation of a single day in human history. Whether an amateur with a mobile phone camera or a professional photographer, Aday.org asks anyone – and everyone – in possession of one of the world’s estimated one billion digital cameras to document their experiences of the day: uploading their images in order to create a visual archive of our lives today.

The images will form the biggest searchable online picture archive of its type, and the most striking photos will be used in a simultaneously-staged global exhibition in October 2012, and feature in a book entitled ‘A Day In The World’ (to be published in November 2012). For the purposes of maintaining this image archive for future generations, hard drives containing all of images from May 15th 2012 will be stored within a secure underground location (details to be announced in April). The principal sponsor of Aday.org is Ericsson, the world's largest mobile telecommunications equipment vendor.

Aday.org was devised by Stockholm-based non-profit organisation, Expressions of Humankind, which supports scientific research and education centred on the photographic image and the written word. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who sits on the Global Advisory Board for Aday.org (and will be contributing his own photographs on May 15th), comments: “Take this unique opportunity with me, and thousands of others around the world, to create a priceless collection of images, to boost understanding and enhance research and education.” Fellow Global Advisory Board member, Sir Richard Branson comments: “This great project is about real people taking pictures of real life in real-time. Please get your camera and share your life on May 15.”

Joining the Archbishop in documenting their days are astronaut Andre Kuipers, currently stationed at the International Space Station 300km above the Earth’s surface, as well as Grammy-nominated singer, Robyn, former President of Ireland, Mary Robinson, and Deputy Secretary General of the UN, Jan Eliasson – but so too are less immediately recognisable, but equally important individuals that have already signed-up to participate, including teenagers in Greenland, Japanese adults displaced by the Fukushima disaster, Moscow-based arts students, and psychoanalysts in Buenos Aires. Each person’s contribution will be of relevance to help document a day in all of our lives.

Aday.org seeks participants of all ages, backgrounds, and from every corner of our planet: each contribution as relevant and significant as the next person’s in creating this unprecedented snapshot of humanity.

To help get the largest number of people involved, Aday.org has already recruited hundreds of global ‘connectors’ – leading lights from the worlds of photography (including 30 World Press Photo winners), journalism and academia – who will both take part on the day and spread the word as well as encourage participation among their own social networks, intranets, mailing lists, or fan-bases.

How To Get Involved

In advance of May 15th all interested participants should register (for free) at www.aday.org to receive updates on the project and to access details on how to make the most of the day when the world photographs itself.

Participants will be asked to upload their images at www.aday.org (following the easy-to-use instructions) and are requested to link each submitted image to major themes such as ‘Home’ and ‘Work’. Within users’ profile spaces, participants will be able to sort work into distinct sub-sections named “my wall”, “my tools”, “my room”, “my energy”, “my transport”, “my people”, “my technology”: allowing users to search and share pictures along specific themes. Any upload of a photograph will be accompanied by unique data on who took the picture and where, what camera was used, and why the subject or topic was chosen. This categorisation will assist in the display of all of the images submitted, helping make the pictures searchable and comparable.

Participants will retain the copyright to their images, and pictures submitted will be used for future research, and never for commercial purposes. A book ‘A Day in the World’ – containing the best images – will be published in several language editions in November 2012. The project is open to anyone with a passion for photography. Each person can upload up to 10 images. All images must be uploaded within 5 days of May 15th.

The ADay.org website – containing full instructions – is available in English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, and Arabic.

Aday.org – Organisation

The Aday.org Global Advisory Council, who will all be taking part on May 15th alongside other global participants, includes: Archbishop Desmond Tutu; entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson; singer, Robyn; former President of Ireland, Mary Robinson; Nobel Peace Prize laureate and former President of Finland, Martti Ahtisaari; Former Prime Minister of Norway, and current UN Special Envoy on Climate Change, Gro Harlem Brundtland, and Deputy Secretary General of the UN, Jan Eliasson.

Advising the project is a Scientific Research Council featuring Professor Harriet Wallberg-Henriksson, President of Stockholm’s Karolinska Institutet and member of the Nobel Assembly; Professor Val Williams, head of photographic research and professor of the history and culture of photography at the University of the Arts in London; Craig Venter, Biologist, Entrepreneur, and Founder and Chairman of both the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) and Synthetic Genomics Inc (SGI), and Professor Teruo Okano, Director of the Institute of Advanced Biomedical Engineering and Science at Tokyo Women’s Medical University.

Aday.org’s Editor-In-Chief is Ayperi Karabuda Ecer (Vice President Pictures at Reuters and former Editor-In-Chief of MAGNUM Photos, Paris). Its project manager is Sander Goudswaard, a former online coordinator at the World Press Photo headquarters in Amsterdam.

International and local companies joining Ericsson in sponsoring the project include Sweco, Postkodlotteriets Kulturestiftelse, Vinge, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Posterscope, Snapfish, Wallenbergstiftelserna and Vasakronan.

Aday.org – The History Behind The Idea

The initiative was partly inspired by A Day in the Life of Sweden, the largest photographic undertaking in Sweden’s history, in which professional photographers from across that nation contributed pictures from a single day in 2003. That project was coordinated by photographer Jeppe Wikstrom, a member of the board of the Expressions of Humankind foundation. Over three thousand professional photographers participated in the initiative. Expanding this concept to a global level, ADay.org will be open to members of the public of all proficiencies, taking photographic celebration to an unprecedented level.

Organisers hope the initiative will reprise the success of 1955’s legendary The Family of Man exhibition, curated by Edward Steichen at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (but which toured the world for decades). The show featured 508 photographs by 273 photographers in 68 countries, selected from almost two million pictures submitted by famous and unknown photographers. The ADay.org project, however, through its digital platform, will allow for every photograph of May 15th 2012 submitted to be viewed online.

“The scope and diversity of this project make it unique,” says Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and former President of Finland, Martti Ahtisaari. “It puts everyone’s life in the centre of a giant story of our times yet to be told”.

“I think it’s one of the big advantages of the space stations that we can show the people on the planet that we can do this together,” comments astronaut Andre Kuipers, who will be photographing his May 15th in the International Space Station. “Collaboration is very important and that’s why I wanted to participate in this fantastic project”.

ADay – Tuesday May 15th 2012

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ENDS

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