Photographer Gets Creative, Turns Coconut Into Camera

Nope, we're not joking. Photographer Kotama Bouabane is creating photographs using coconuts. While he used the fruit in several different ways to create images, his most interesting method simply involves tape, a coconut, and some photo paper! Read on and check out the video for more!

Kotama was initially drawn to coconuts because of their immediate connotations in culture: leisure and exoticism. He started off by simply making photograms. He would poke out three holes in the coconut's "head" to create a face.

Kotama then moved on to taking photos with the coconut itself. He would take a sawed-in-half coconut, clean it, dry it, and put a piece of photo paper in the middle. He would then use his finger to control exposure over the hole on the face. His next step was to develop the photo paper, where he mixed coconut water along with the other necessary chemicals.

It's something that you don't really have a lot of control over in terms of clarity and focus, so there's a lot of experimentation. So, the images are the ones that I thought were more successful in terms of finding the bridge between the mood and the tone of all of the images together.

Kotama is the first to admit there's a level of comedy to his work with coconuts:

I think there's a lot of humor in the work that I do, as well. And I think taking a selfie stick and mounting a coconut onto the end of it and taking it to tourist destinations is an absurd gesture. But I also think it comments on how we're obsessed with place and how we use objects and how we photograph in this day and age.

Well, that's what Kotama Bouabane did with a coconut! What edible item will you now use as a camera? 

To see more of his work, check out his website.