‘This Book Is a Camera’, A Pop-Up Book That Opens Up to Reveal a Working Camera

This Book Is a Camera GIF

This Book Is a Camera is a pop-up book designed by artist Kelli Anderson that opens up to reveal a working camera. The simple construction works as a pinhole camera with a cardboard shutter that is lifted and replaced to create a timed exposure on photo paper.

For the past couple of months, I’ve been searching for the right sequence of cuts and folds to turn a piece of paper into a camera. Specifically, I wanted to make a working camera within an educational pop-up book—one that connects the dots between design and science / structure and function. Happy to report: it is finally real! The final book explains—and actively demonstrates—how a structure as humble as a folded piece of paper can tap into the intrinsic properties of light to produce a photograph.

These Books Are Cameras

This Camera is a Book

images via Kelli Anderson

via Booooooom

Glen Tickle
Glen Tickle

Amelia's dad. Steph's husband. Writer, comedian, gentleman. Good at juggling, bad at chess.