The Camera Van

Harrod Blank -

One night In the fall of 1993,
Harrod Blank had a dream in which he covered his car
with cameras and then drove around and took pictures
of people on the streets. The public, unaware
that the cameras worked, reacted naturally.
At the end of the dream, Harrod looked at pictures
taken with the van of faces frozen
in the moment of awe, pictures so powerful
that the next morning he decided
to attempt to build such a vehicle in reality.





The Camera Van's front grill features
every polaroid camera ever made,
from the Land Camera to the popular "One-Step"
to The Swinger.






The Camera Van's passenger side is both a
gallery of antique collectible cameras
and an interactive delight for the eyes!
Four fully-functional 32" color TV monitors
make up the frames of a giant film strip, while
36 separate slide viewers comprise the film strip
sprocket holes. The monitors broadcast
anything Blank wants to show, from one
of his several films to
the actual closed-circuit image of what the Van's
working video and still cameras see.






Two life-size Duratrans murals of children light up
and "wave" at passersby from the Camera Van's
rear "windows."





A perfect, blow up-replica of a kodak instamatic on
the camera Van's driver's side comprised entirely of
Kodak instamatics.





The camera van has a dash of over 200
operational light meters.






Mounted on the engine shroud is the monitor which,
thanks to hidden video cameras outside,
displays what Harrod's hidden still camera's see.
A click of a dashboard button, and Blank is one shot
closer to his photographic dream.






Check out this video -


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfjmP51Gy84