Museum of the Last Time
Find the last appearances of places and things in your photo library.
Not yet available on the App Store.
What it does
- Looks through your photo library for places, objects and cameras that have stopped appearing, and for long gaps between photographs.
- Gives each finding a museum label, called a placard, with a date and reference number.
- Selects one record each day. You can browse the full collection at any time.
- Marks uncertain attributions. You can correct a record, take it down, or keep a text copy of its placard.
The Museum compares a subject’s absence with how often it used to appear. A last photograph is evidence of a last appearance in the library; it cannot establish what happened afterwards.
From the app · Welcome notice
The Museum of the Last Time holds the final appearance of things.
Not the first time — everyone keeps those. The last: the last photograph of a couch, of a street you used to walk, of a car, of a kitchen you no longer stand in. These are almost never recognised at the time. They are taken carelessly, in bad light, with a thumb in the frame.
At the doors
What it looks for
Places no longer visited
Somewhere you went, repeatedly, and then did not go again.
Hall of final appearances
Objects photographed repeatedly, then absent from the later record.
The cabinet of instruments
The last photographs associated with cameras the Museum can identify.
The long silences
Intervals in which the collection records nothing at all.
From the Museum’s notices
On the lighting
The Museum is kept dark in both appearances. Galleries showing photographs are lit to about 50 lux, because light fades them. Nothing here can actually fade. The Museum observes the practice anyway.
Room 050
On being wrong
Records marked “attributed” were assembled partly by resemblance. The Museum may have gathered two similar things under one name. Where it can, it separates them by where they were photographed — two grey couches in two apartments are two couches, whatever they look like. Where it cannot, it says so, and you may correct it.
Museum of the Last Time
Record numbers
Each placard carries a date and an accession number, such as 1987.11.03.001. The date belongs to the record.
Correct or remove a record
Corrected records are taken off the wall and kept with the correction. You can also choose “Take it down” without giving a reason. Either kind of record can be put back. Your original photographs are not changed.
Screenshots are left out of the collection.