Aday.org Prepares For May 15, 2012 – The Day the World Photographs Itself

What will future generations know about everyday life in 2012? Swedish organization aday.org hopes to make things a little easier by creating a visual archive, documenting everyday life around the world as it looked on May 15, 2012.

Initiated by the non-profit foundation Expressions of Humankind and supported by a highly respected global advisory council and a special scientific council, aday.org asks people across the globe to pick up a camera on May 15, 2012 and participate in the world's largest and most comprehensive photographic documentation of a single day in human history.

What is close to you? What matters to you, the organization asks on its website. We will connect your images to images form all around the world, creating a unique online experience where photographs will be shared, compared, and explored. Your view on life will be preserved to inspire generations to come.

Be it on a cell phone camera, Hasselblad, homemade or borrowed, aday.org hopes everyone will join in. All of the images received will be displayed online and a select few will appear in simultaneously-staged global exhibitions in October and a book titled A Day In The World to be published in November. According to organizers, the images will form the biggest searchable online picture archive of its type and a vital aid for future researchers.

The project is inspired by the Family of Man, a 1955 exhibition of international photography that became a multi-million-selling book. Curated by Edward Steichen at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the exhibit toured the world for decades, showing 508 photographs by 273 photographers in 68 countries. The images were selected from almost two million submissions from both famous and unknown photographers of the time.

A similar initiative called A Day in the Life of Sweden took place in 2003, but now aday.org hopes to expand this concept to a global stage.

The scope and diversity of this project makes it unique, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and former President of Finland Martti Ahtisaari said, announcing his participation. It puts everyone's life in the center of a giant story of our times yet to be told.

Since Family of Man debuted in 1955, the digital revolution has transformed amateur and professional photography. Aday.org hopes to capitalize on the roughly 1 billion digital cameras around the world on May 15 to get a snapshot of everyday life, warts and all. That means photos of your home, the commute to work, your office, your nighttime routine, and everything in between. In the end, organizers hope to ascertain a record of our common humanity with the details that professional photojournalists don't always deem important enough to capture.

Aday.org will have a coterie of supporters armed with cameras on May 15. The list includes several representatives at the United Nations, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Virgin boss Richard Branson, ESA Astronaut Andre Kuipers, and Swedish superstar Robyn.

We are more aware of each other than ever before in the history of human life, Robyn said, announcing her participation. It's more than a perception these days, now it´s a fact that there are so many different ways to look at the world. Aday.org puts this in focus.

Branson echoed that statement saying: This great project is about real people taking pictures of real life in real-time.

Scientists will also play an important part in the project. In addition to Andrew Kuipers, who will record the day from the International Space Station, other scientists and adventurers will document everything from Antarctica to Mount Everest in hopes of capturing life at each corner of the planet.

Be it art or anthropology, science or sociology, the project is nothing if not ambitious.

Beyond the galleries and book, the massive collection of photos collected on May 15 will be buried down a Swedish copper mine as a time capsule for future generations to discover.

Want to shape the discussion of future generations? For more information visit http://www.aday.org/about