The bespoke analogue camera was designed and 3D printed specifically for the project, engineered to expose SIM card-sized silver emulsion plates using the wet plate collodion process. The portable darkroom, developed and continuously refined in tandem, allows workshops to take place anywhere, making the historically demanding process accessible in community settings far from conventional studio infrastructure. Both objects are purpose-built instruments, as considered in their design as the images they help create.
Project #137*
The SIM Project
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The SIM Project is a living collective archive built from SIM-card-sized silver emulsion photographic artworks made in workshops across nine (and counting) countries. Drawing on the Victorian wet-plate collodion process, participants transfer a selected smartphone photograph onto a miniature glass plate with a bespoke camera and develop it in a portable darkroom. The project was founded by artist and anthropologist Liz Hingley in 2017 and has grown into an internationally exhibited multisensory body of work supported by a broad network of partners. The collaboration spans digital, physical production and exhibition design.
Copyright 2025 Liz Hingley
Copyright 2025 Liz Hingley
The SIM Project has been exhibited at the V&A during London Design Festival 2024, selected for the King's College London pavilion at the 2025 London Design Biennale at Somerset House, and presented through the Waymarkers exhibition at the Curiosity Cabinet on the Strand, a prominent public installation running from March to December 2025. The project has also featured at the National Portrait Gallery, the B-Side Festival in Portland, and the Houston Center for Photography in Texas, among others. Exhibition design and build for LDF 2024 included custom 3D printed tile installations. Fittings for the Waymarkers show at the Curiosity Cabinet were also produced in-house.
Copyright 2025 Liz Hingley
Copyright 2025 Liz Hingley
Copyright 2025 Liz Hingley
The website provides the documentary foundation for a project that exists primarily in the physical world. At its centre is a custom interactive map charting the project's global reach, workshop by workshop: each session, its participants and their displacements are recorded and made visible, building a growing spatial archive of connection across borders. The platform carries the weight of the project's anthropological ambition while remaining accessible to the communities it serves.
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A precise digital presence for a minimalist architecture practice navigating an international portfolio.
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