Slopfest #15 · Spring 1947 · Vienna

Developed in Eleven Minutes

A new camera printed its own photos in a minute. Ours took eleven and came out brown.

#15Filed under "Q" for "quality". We never look there.

Wet contact print pinned to a beer-garden fence with a clothes peg, SLOPFEST #15 scratched into the emulsion, two blurry men carrying a darkroom

Museum status: Listed as "priceless" (nobody would name a price).

Venue: Schweizerhaus, Prater, the beer garden
Attendance: 176
Guest of honour: Man Ray (photographed the buffet and called it a rayograph)
Fun fact: 4,000 prints, all of them a little brown

What happened

Inspired by the news, the committee built its own instant camera: a box camera bolted to a portable darkroom and carried by two volunteers. Every guest was photographed, every print took eleven minutes and came out brown, and each was pinned up while still wet. By midnight the fences were covered. Man Ray photographed the buffet and called it a rayograph.

Elsewhere in 1947

Edwin Land demonstrates the first instant camera, which develops a print in about a minute, to the Optical Society of America.

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