from fruit to photo: kotama bouabane turns a coconut into a camera

from fruit to photo: kotama bouabane turns a coconut into a camera
images courtesy of kotama bouabane

coconuts typically bring to mind a place of paradise, an exotic retreat away from everyday realities. this idyllic object is normally eaten, or drank, offering a taste of the serene sanctuary it symbolically represents.

with the theme of travel and leisure already in mind, canadian artist kotama bouabane pondered artistic, alternative uses for a coconut, ones which could allow it to possess not only edible properties, but functional ones, while on holiday for instance. while participating in a 6 week artist residency at the banff centre in alberta, canada, bouabane experimented with the ways in which he could use a coconut in the production of creating images, eventually creating a working coconut camera for the project ‘cc50g’.

the pinhole device has been created through a process of draining, cutting, and drying two sawed halves of a coconut shell. to create an image, bouabane has placed a piece of unexposed paper between the divided layers and allowed light to pass through a small aperture at one end of the piece. finally, the image has been developed in a dark room using coconut water, rather than regular water — furthering the full use and adaption of a coconut into a camera.

bouabane attached the coconut camera to a stick, forming a humorous reinterpretation of a selfie stick

bouabane’s handheld device refers to today’s cultural obsession with selfie sticks

photographic results from the coconut camera

a piece of unexposed paper is sandwiched between the divided coconut layers

the image has been developed in a dark room using coconut water

bouabane initially made a series of humorous photograms using the ‘face’ of the coconut

the comical coconut portraits are created with light-sensitive paper, but without a camera