The time traveller: How a 1930 camera captured the 2026 World Cup

The chatter first began on Threads. "What a cool dude. Maybe a time traveller?" someone posted. At the FIFA World Cup, where fast cameras with 400mm f/2.8 prime lenses are considered “the sideline standard”, a curly-haired man stood out with gear from another age—a Zeiss Ikon 250/11 folding camera, complete with tripod and bellows.

The camera was as old as the tournament itself. The World Cup kicked off in Uruguay in 1930; this camera was born in Germany in the same year.

The buzz around the camera and the photographer grew louder during the Round of 16 in Vancouver, where Switzerland played Colombia for a quarterfinal slot. The “time traveller”—Egyptian sports photographer Fareed Kotb, 40—stood behind the Zeiss and ducked under the cloth whenever a clickable moment presented itself.

This was not Kotb’s first FIFA World Cup. He was accredited to Russia 2018 and Qatar 2022, where he shot thousands of frames. With the Zeiss, he shot 10 photos in Toronto (Portugal vs Croatia) and 40 in Vancouver. Those were the only two matches he covered.

Project 1930 began in Cairo’s weekly flea market, Souq Diana, Kotb told THE WEEK. “There you can find cameras, lenses and photographic equipment,” he said. “And also old photographs, letters, books, documents, furniture, collectibles….”

The hoard at Souq Diana mostly came from houses that had been locked up for decades. Dealers would buy the entire contents of the house, sort them and put them up for sale. And with Cairo being Cairo, travellers from all over the world crossed paths here through the ages. The city held their stories and their possessions.

Kotb said that his job was especially difficult because he was specifically looking for a camera from 1930. “That was probably the hardest part of the search,” he said. “I wasn’t simply shopping for a vintage camera where I could compare several models and choose the one I liked best. And there was always a possibility that I would not find a suitable camera at all.”

Once he found the camera, he verified the serial number to confirm that it was indeed from 1930. Then came the next challenge—film. The camera was designed for “approximately 13cm × 18cm glass plates”, which are not readily available now.

Kotb and collaborator Mohamed Mimouni considered preparing their own plates. But that would have meant adding additional layers of complexity while shooting. During a fast-paced match, he would have to prep the plate, load it, and shoot. Also, they had no guarantee that airlines would allow him to carry the chemicals needed to treat the plates.

So they compromised and adapted the camera to shoot 10cm × 15cm sheet film. “But, in Canada, I couldn’t find that film,” he said. “So we had to adapt to 4inch × 5inch sheet film, which is a much more internationally available large-format standard.”

He would eventually shoot with Foma Fomapan 100 and Ilford HP5 Plus 400 film stock. Fomapan has 12 exposures per roll, and Ilford 24.

Looking back, Kotb feels that this was one of the recurring themes of Project 1930. “Almost nothing was straightforward. The camera was built for a photographic world that no longer exists, so every stage required finding a way to connect the technology of 1930 with the reality of 2026. But then, that limitation was part of the experiment.”

In a parallel world, there were other problems. His Canada visa came through, but his US visa was rejected four times. Kotb applied representing his own agency, Footografiia. Only on the final attempt was he told that Footografiia was not on the list of accredited organisations.

“That was extremely frustrating for me because Footografiia is an established agency,” he said. “Our work has been used by organisations including the Associated Press, EPA and the BBC. The BBC, for example, licensed photographs from our archive of Mohamed Salah from his early period at Al Mokawloon. If I had known about this issue earlier, I would have taken a different route.”

And so Kotb set out for Canada, facing airport officials who found it hard to believe he was really going to shoot the World Cup. “At Cairo International Airport, I ended up spending more than three hours going through additional inspections and security checks,” he said. “They examined the camera very carefully, including checks related to narcotics, before they finally allowed me to travel.”

And, he had one rule, the Zeiss would not travel in the aircraft hold. It was in his carry-on case. “It was the heart of Project 1930,” he said.

At the two venues he shot at, the camera became the star, with senior photographers coming up to chat with him. As FIFA chose the positions from which each photographer could shoot, he had to work with the spots assigned to him. “There was no screen on the back of the camera,” he said. “No histogram. No instant preview. I could travel to another country, photograph a moment at the World Cup, return to Egypt with the film, and still not know whether that image existed until Mimouni began developing the negatives.”

So, how much did the Zeiss cost?

“I would prefer not to give the exact amount, because what I bought was not really just a camera,” he said. “It was not an old camera sitting alone on a shelf. It was a complete historical collection—a camera together with photographs and archival material that had survived with it. So I paid considerably more than the normal market value of a Zeiss Ikon Ideal 250/11—not two or three times more, and not even ten times more. It was significantly beyond that.”

And, why is that history important?

The archive proved that this very Zeiss was used to photograph the Egyptian team at the 1934 World Cup in Italy, where The Pharaohs became the first African side to play in the tournament. Hungary trumped Egypt 4-2 at Naples. The same photographer used the Zeiss to shoot the team at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, where Egypt lost to Austria 3-1. The camera had been to Nazi Germany and back.

So, who was that photographer?

“I tried, but could not find out,” Kotb said. “Tracing the original owner could become an entire project—or even a documentary film—on its own. There is still something fascinating about that mystery, though. I know where the camera’s story is going now, but I still don’t know where its story began.”