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The Polapola Project (Das Polapola-Projekt)

Dr. Weird Web has wondered, at various odd hours of the night, what it would be like to take a picture of a picture of a picture. At what point does the first picture disappear? What happens to the scene in the picture once the next oldest picture is removed? There have been rumors of such wonderings on the Internet and now we have found a weird one!

The Polapola project started in 1995 on a beach in Brittany, France, when Mark-Steffen Göwecke took the first picture. "On a beach I photographed with a the SX-70 a [P]olaroid showing sand and stones. Again the resulting picture was photographed with the Polaroid-camera. The distances in space and time became larger." That is how Mr. Göwecke describes this project. But the words do not do justice to the flow of picture after picture the site makes available. Much of the content is in German, but a brief English description of each picture is available by hovering over it. A "time-line" of all 262 pictures is displayed along the bottom of the page. Scroll along to see how each scene contains the photograph of the prior scene. The flash animation of the individual photos makes it appear to zoom in and out as you click the '<' and '>' symbols.

The last picture was taken in February 2014 and the project is "closed". But it is certainly a permanent addition to the Weird on the Web. If you visit the site, be sure to select the "Flash" version for the animation it offers.

The site also hosts several other artsy projects by Herr Göwecke, but the Polapola Project is plenty weird enough to justify a visit.

The Polapola Project