Spycam Project

Today, traditional snapshot photography is in crisis. While there have been many great photographers, such as Daido Moriyama, working with the snapshot method in Japan, the process has become taboo, with a growing public awareness of the violation of personal rights. Similarly, all phones sold in Japan cannot use the phone’s built-in camera application without producing a sound. However, simultaneously, security cameras are found in many places in the city, all streets can easily be accessed through Google Maps Street View, and the Spycam App is one of the highest-ranking applications in the Japanese App Store.

The aforementioned app takes photographs at intervals of three seconds. During shooting, the phone’s display appears dark, as though off. Similarly, the application is silent. Working with the contradiction and tension given above, I have been using the Spycam App to create images that fall both into themes of surveillance and voyeurism as well as into the traditional genre of candid and spontaneous snapshot photography. As such, the project is both a documentation but also a challenging of current attitudes towards digital recording.