The book gives a view of a new generation of box camera operators working in the street and in studios with mainly homemade cameras. These rudimentary tools have many names in different languages — Afghan box camera, street box, cámara minutera, lambe-lambe, Cuban polaroid, instant box, minute camera, kamra-e-faoree — but the idea is always the same: a mostly self-built camera used as an instant camera in the street or in a park, to make pictures of passing clients; the box is camera and darkroom at once.

The history books have largely forgotten these operators, since theirs was the image of the poor and was often considered cheap by studio owners. The book brings together fifty-four of them from twenty-one countries, each with a personal style and adaptation, each able to turn light and sensitive paper into a memorable object. Every time one of them unfolds a tripod and draws a client with that unusual apparatus, it is a performance. A short guide on how to build and use one, with references, closes the volume.