One camera. Two hands. One negative.
One negative, two people, a wait you set yourselves. Both In Time is a bridge between two people, sometimes between two who will never meet.
Light meets photo paper through a 0.3 mm hole. Four seconds, sometimes four minutes. You expose one half; somebody else exposes the other, maybe a week, maybe a year later. The negative lies between you like a sealed letter neither of you can open yet.
It is developed with instant coffee, vitamin C, and baking soda, five minutes under red light in your darkened kitchen. What ends up on the paper is an image that could only exist because two people made time for each other, even if they never met.
That is Both In Time. A camera that waits for a second person.
A walk in Portugal
There are ideas that cannot end. They only change carriers, the way migratory birds cross countries and yet remain themselves.
When the art project camera obscura 2005/1 to infinity came to an end in 2025, after two decades and more than a thousand negatives, its thoughts wandered to a beach in Portugal. Przemek and Ineke, father-in-law and daughter-in-law, walked along the water for a long time, a bottle of red wine in the sand, and talked about whether a project with the infinity sign in its name is allowed to stop at all.
By evening the answer was there: the same principle, but in a different form. No more art auctions, no archive, but a camera small enough for two hands that need not even know each other.
Perhaps it took exactly these twenty years to bring Both In Time to life. Carried by two people from two generations: Przemek, who has worked with light, craft and patience for more than forty years. And Ineke, who as a coach knows exactly how real connection between people comes about, and how much courage it sometimes takes to give memories room.
A generation lies between the two of them. And that is precisely the camera’s blueprint: it joins what time or distance have separated. A father and a daughter. A grandmother and a grandson. Two friends with an ocean between them.
Today every Both In Time camera is made by hand by Przemek in Stuttgart and numbered consecutively from 0001. Nothing is left of the bottle of red wine in the sand, and everything is left of the walk: a camera that travels from hand to hand, weaving times together and gathering stories that stay.
Who is behind it
Przemek Zajfert
Heliography · The 7th Day
Przemek Zajfert (born 1959) lives and works in Stuttgart. For over 25 years he travelled European cities as a street artist with a mobile camera obscura, and his archive spans more than 40 years of working with it. More than 13,000 people worldwide took part in his participatory projects camera obscura 2005/1 to infinity and The 7th Day, each photograph exposed for at least seven days. Since 2014 he has been working on Heliography 1827 to 2027, using Niépce's process. Both In Time brings that practice into two hands: the same patience, now in a camera you pass on instead of on a world map.
Ineke Bader
Co-Founder · Both In Time
Ineke Bader is a personal and business coach. She started out in headhunting and now works independently with individuals and teams. Her work turns on the same question this camera does: how does a moment come about, and what does it do to us? At Both In Time she makes sure the camera works for someone who has never developed a picture. Przemek brings the craft; Ineke brings the perspective of someone holding a camera like this for the first time.
Camera Obscura 2005/1–∞
Two holes, one negative – 2005 to 2025, the origin project
The 7th Day
13,000+ participants · each exposed at least 7 days
Heliography 1827–2027
Niépce process as contemporary practice, since 2014
Camera Obscura Art
Pinhole, long exposure, silver: works & editions
zajfert.de
The complete work: projects, exhibitions, books
Wikipedia
Przemek Zajfert: photographer and light artist, in Stuttgart since 1985
Real pinhole optics
The pinhole is photography in its simplest form: a 0.3 mm hole, no glass, no electronics, no screen telling you in advance what you have. You aim the camera, open the hole, and hand control over to light and to time. What emerges is softer and slower than any phone photo, and it exists only once.
Two hands, one image
One negative, two people. You expose one half, someone else the other, separated by kilometres or by years. Neither of you sees what the other captured until the image is developed. What ends up on the paper is never the image you would have made alone. It belongs to both of you.
Developed with coffee
Caffenol is a developer made from instant coffee, vitamin C, and baking soda: all from the supermarket, nothing toxic, nothing for hazardous waste. You develop in your own kitchen and watch, with your own eyes, an image appear out of nothing for the first time. After that, you understand what 'developing' really means.