This just in from the Dallas Morning News: a free photobooth at the front of the Imperial Palace Casino in Las Vegas is no more. According to the News Travel Column, “This great freebie falls victim to what has been a series of changes and revamps at the center-Strip casino since it was bought by Harrah’s.” We haven’t had any reports from people who have used the booth in the past to know if it was a traditional or digital booth. If anyone has memories of using the booth, please, comment or drop us a line.
Just as the first trip across the country this summer saw a new location or two, the second trip has spawned a couple of discoveries as well. First, thanks to the Flickr ‘photobooth’ tag feed, I heard about a photobooth at Tex Tubb’s Taco Palace in Madison, Wisconsin a few months ago, and last week, had the chance to visit as we passed through town. The restaurant looks like a great place, though we didn’t have time to eat there; the photobooth is located near the passageway between the two areas of the restaurant, next to the bar and in front of the kitchen. It’s a black and white, Model 21T, and costs $3. The customized sign on the front panel of the booth reads, “Smile real perty and pin up your pic. Make your mama proud.” Customers are encouraged to place their photos on the wall of fame, underneath the 8‑track player, in the doorway.
In music video news, one night a few states ago, Aimee noticed a photobooth in the new Jessica Simpson video that was on the tv in the hotel room; the director of the video, Brett Ratner, explains why the photobooth makes an appearance.
This half of Photobooth.net is currently relocating from upstate New York to Southern California, and on the way, I’ve tried to find a few photobooth locations I haven’t seen before. Sadly, I only came across one along the road, but I also happened upon one here in Los Angeles.
At Sparky’s Roadhouse Café in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, we enjoyed a great meal, a beer from their huge selection, and a classic Model 11 photobooth. The booth turns out some great black and white photos, and each strip goes for two dollars (or a little more) in quarters.
Yesterday, wandering along Melrose in Los Angeles, I spotted a photobooth in the Marc Jacobs store, a booth that is apparently only there for a short time as part of a promotion. The booth is free, “one per customer,” and is also a nice black and white, a Model 25.
We’ve already got a number of photobooth locations in LA, but I’ll be on the lookout for more now that we’ll be living here — any advice is most welcome.
Bloomberg’s Carly Berwick reports on a new exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art that pays tribute to the late Susan Sontag. Sontag’s words are paired with photos she wrote about, and others that illustrate her ideas. Included is a Warhol photobooth strip:
The recently acquired Peter Hujar photograph of Sontag
herself, taken in 1975, reveals the writer reclining, relaxed but fearsome. A quote nearby states that “photographs instigate, confirm, seal legends.” Sontag’s words become the occasion for putting the Hujar next to a circa-1963 Warhol photo-booth strip of self-portraits…
I was a big “Weird Al” Yankovic fan when I was a kid, I have to say. The real beginnings of my awareness of popular music coincided nicely with the advent of the CD, so I didn’t have many store-bought tapes besides a “Straight Up” cassingle here and a “Cocktail” soundtrack there… But I owned a cassette of every “Weird Al” album I could get my hands on, even the ones that parodied songs I didn’t know. I loved them for the same reasons everyone else did: they were funny. They were smart, too, and kind of amazing, the way he could make his songs sound just like the ones he was mocking. He’s a wonderful sort of constant in the world; even when you’re not paying attention, he’s still out there, doing what he does best.
A chance hearing of “You’re Pitiful,” his parody of the ubiquitous James Blunt song, brought us to his website, where, in his Photo Gallery, we found no fewer than eleven different photobooth shots, some with two photos blended together, of Al from his childhood. The list of “Famous in the Photobooth” gets a little longer.
Photo: Photo booth fun #1, weirdal.com.
As Ed Blank of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review writes in a review of The Break-Up, the tradition of photobooth photos as relationship montage is alive and well in 2006; it’s a wonder that it hasn’t gotten old yet. We’re not complaining, but have these people seen any movies before making this one?
After a montage of wacky photo-booth snapshots, which passes for the courtship, we cut straight to the stress.
We’ll see whether they’re real photobooth shots or not, and get a page up for the film once the DVD is released.
Ever since owning my first photobooth I have been trying to get a school or church to let me set the booth up on premises and create their yearbook or directory.
Well, as you might have guessed, I am about 36 years too late to claim the “Mr. Originality” prize. Take a look at this 1970 yearbook from Rice University. (Full yearbook here.)
The students really seemed to get into the spirit, resulting in some creative images. Make sure to note the name of the woman pictured on the fifth page of images in the photostrip on the far right. Elton Joan. Nice.
Lifematon, a new French website dedicated to collecting photobooth photos, has been added to our Projects section this week. The site states that its goal is to “collect the largest possible number of photo booth photos. So, no need to throw them away any more, we will just recycle them!
Every month the photo with the most votes from each category will have a “Place of Honour” on the welcome page of the web site for one month.”
The interface for the site is one of its more interesting aspects; photos are arrayed on a field of green grass and the user can move around to find more photos scattered in different directions. It’s a little more fun than useful at this point, but it is an interesting approach. We’re hoping nobody was going to throw their photobooth photos away to begin with, but if you’re interested in feedback, you might try sending one Lifematon’s way.
A new addition to the Photobooth.net Art section this week is 29 year-old Japanese artist Tomoko Sawada. Sawada is best known for her piece ID-400, a collection of 400 “single photo-booth images rephotographed, multiplied times four and arranged in squares, then fitted together in framed grids of 100 squares each, adding up to a regular rogue’s gallery of unprepossessing little women.” More can be found on Sawada and her work at the Zabriskie Gallery page for the show.
In addition, we’ve added a 2003 New York Times article to the In Print section. The article describes Sawada’s work, as well as Babbette Hines’ Photobooth book and the booth and show at the Griffin Museum in 2003.
Thanks to Ricky, our listings for photobooths in Maryland has tripled, with the addition of two color booths in the Beltway Mall in Greenbelt, MD. Booth I and booth II are typical modern Photo-Me booths, and each runs $3 a strip.
