The 1000 year photo – Breaking News & Latest Updates 2026
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The 1,000-year photo.

The aptly named “Millennium Camera” is a functional art piece that intends to capture how the landscape in Tuscon, Arizona changes over the next 1,000 years via an extremely long-exposure image.

The experimental pinhole camera set up by University of Arizona research associate Jonathan Keats aims to encourage people to imagine what the future will hold.

Keats says:

“Most people have a pretty bleak outlook on what lies ahead. It’s easy to imagine that people in 1,000 years could see a version of Tucson that is far worse than what we see today, but the fact that we can imagine it is not a bad thing. It’s actually a good thing, because if we can imagine that, then we can also imagine what else might happen, and therefore it might motivate us to take action to shape our future.”

A photograph of the Millennium Camera, peering across the desert landscape toward the Star Pass neighborhood West of Tumamoc Hill in Tucson, Arizona.
A snapshot for the long-distant future — the Millennium Camera will capture an image of the Tuscon landscape for ten centuries.
Image: Chris Richards / University of Arizona College of Fine Arts.
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