Candid camera project captures the faces of lost Olympics fans

Lost Olympic tourists seeking help this week may find themselves the subject of a photographic project by ad agency Mother and artist Carroll Taveras.

Benjamin John Herman
Benjamin John Herman

As you read this Mother staff are wandering the streets of Shoreditch, London, clad in sandwich boards, offering their help to sports fans cast adrift.

Derek Zaboklicki
Derek Zaboklicki

The price of orientation is a short walk to Mother’s studio, where a photo booth has been set up to take portraits of the bewildered, who will then be fed, watered, and thankfully helped on their way by a Mother ‘concierge.’

Feruccio Andena
Feruccio Andena

Taveras who is taking the photos herself on a Polaroid and a large format view camera, is looking to document a snap-shot of the people who came to the London Olympics. 

George Markovic
George Markovic

The project follows on from Taveras’ Photo Studio project, launched in January 2009, in downtown Brooklyn, New York storefront, the day after President Obama’s inauguration, where she captured some 250 people who drifted in over the next two months.

Luca Piuri
Luca Piuri

The Mother exhibition You Are Here started yesterday and has already captured the results we’ve published. We’re particularly taken by the photo of the guy in the Serbia tracksuit. Is he a lost athlete?

Helen Carissa Herman
Helen Carissa Herman

Each day new photos will be uploaded here. Anyone hoping to visit You Are Here needs to make an appointment through downstairs@motherlondon in order to visit the studio which can be found at the Biscuit Building, 10 Red Church Street, E2

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Comments
  • Laura {Babb Photo} November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

    I love this. In fact I found a lost olympic tourist myself last week and photographed her: http://babbphotoblog.com/2012/07/30/100-strangers-project-3100-olympic-edition-wedding-photographer-londo/

  • Yai November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

    I love this idea, Surely it would have made a more interesting series to have photographed them in London where they were found lost… better to have photographed the tourists in situ in London -‘looking lost’ rather than taking them to a place to be photographed….with a dull background…? It distances the whole project from London and without some background info these photos could just be from anywhere.

  • Papi Bahal November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

    I agree. Would have been more interesting to show them in situ. Why not have a look at my project instead. It’s more interesting and creative.

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/olympics2012/

  • Leah November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

    OMG I love this.

  • Craig Sanderson November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

    Agreed, why take the subjects away from the very environment that makes them interesting? Or is it more about the nostalgia and assumed coolness of taking pictures of people with Polaroids?

    A tourist separated from their tour is a wonderful exploration into the idea of the artificial veil of safety and wellbeing. No matter how slight, a tourist who is excited and confident to be in a particular area can perceive a greater sense of danger and ill-feeling when they are lost despite the world around them remaining just as ‘safe’ as it was a moment before they realised their predicament.

  • Bex Lloyd November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

    Banal beyond words.

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