We were pleased this week to get our hands on a copy of Cameron Woo’s new book Photobooth Dogs, a charming collection of photobooth photos of dogs (with and without their owners) spanning the 80+ year history of the invention.
We were first introduced to Cameron, who’s the co-founder and creative director of the dog-centric magazine Bark, when we heard about a collection of photobooth photos of dogs he put together for a 2005 issue of the magazine.
Later on, Cameron asked us for help in finding photos of dogs in photobooths, and though we weren’t able to be of much help, we were excited to hear about his book. Having had a chance to take a look at it, it’s been worth the wait: the book is a wonderful collection of photos, each with a story to tell about the beloved pets they capture.
It’s very nicely designed, features excellent photo reproduction, and intersperses a (very) few choice quotations about dogs between the photos. I especially appreciate the visual guide to sources at the end, for the few photos in the book that aren’t in Cameron’s personal collection.
The book has a page on the Bark website, with a link to buy the book as well.
A few weeks ago, I spotted a bus shelter ad out of the corner of my eye and wondered “Is that a photostrip?” Upon closer investigation, indeed it was, a strange five-frame hybrid strip featured in an ad for Kate Spade.
Digging a little deeper, we found out that the photobooth in general was included in Kate Spade’s book of “Things We Love” this year, available for browsing in an online version complete with page-flipping animations.
Clicking around some more, we found another version of the book on the site with links to sites having to do with each item — the trailer for i am Cuba, the terrific photo book Store Front — the Disappearing Face of New York, and the wonderful Movie Title Stills Collection site, to name a few. What do you think happens when you click on the photostrip? That’s right, you’re brought right here to our very own Photobooth Directory. Thanks, Kate, for sending folks our way.
Our listings for Australia got a boost this month as we received five submissions from Victoria (the person, not the state), both black and white and color booths from Melbourne and Adelaide.
Included in the updates is the legendary Flinders Street Station in Melbourne, where Elvis Costello shot his video for “I Wanna Be Loved” (though the booth has changed over the years).
The newly listed locations are as follows:
Flinders Street Station I
Flinders Street Station II
Century City Walk
Myer Centre Adelaide I
Myer Centre Adelaide II
Thanks again to Victoria for filling in some more holes in the Great Photobooth Map!
Thanks to Amy Powell for letting us know about the black and white booth at Club 185 in Ohio’s capital city, Columbus.
She also sent in a series of scanned photostrips as well as digital photos of those photos being taken:
We’re happy to add another booth to our directory, and encourage our readers to help out by making a new year’s resolution: tell us about that booth you and your friends have been visiting for years but that isn’t listed on our site yet. Contribute a booth today!
Our friend and prolific contributor Meags Fitzgerald let us know about a photobooth photography show she’s part of called Fotomaton: Selections, which opened this week at the Andy Gato Gallery at Barry University in Miami Shores, Florida.
While the website is a little spare, more information and photos can be found on the show’s Facebook page.
As we were dong some further reading, we discovered that the show actually opened and closed on December 17th; it was a one night event. So, we’re sorry we didn’t have the chance to post about the event earlier, and hope that some of our readers found out about it through other means and were able to enjoy the works on display.
Merry Christmas to all of our readers out there, and thanks for a year filled with fascinating and creative developments on the photobooth front.
Here’s a little greeting courtesy of our friend Klaas in Germany;
Some of our readers may recall the brief mention we made of the wonderful Fotomost Project we took part in with Martin and Ira from Schnellfoto.ru during the 2009 International Photobooth Convention in Chicago (check out photos of the end result in Moscow). Those who participated will certainly remember it, and have probably given up on the hope that they’d ever see the results of their efforts.
In a last-ditch attempt to get the thing done just one year late rather than two years late, I have finished the limited edition numbered set of 100 laserprinted (not photocopied) booklets showcasing the 24 photostrips sent from Moscow and the reply photostrips made in Chicago, along with the story behind the project and some photos of the booths used to make the project happen.
If you’d like a copy for yourself — and these make great stocking-stuffers for the photobooth fan, the photography lover, the Russophile, and anyone interested in a little cross-cultural fun — I’ll be happy to send one your way for five bucks to cover the cost of printing, assembly, and postage (slightly higher outside the U.S.). Choose your location and click the button to go to PayPal, or contact me to make other arrangements. | |
Designer Philippe Starck has created a redesigned Photomaton for Photo-Me International dubbed the “Starbooth,” according to recent French press reports. And according to Photo-Me president Serge Crasniasnki, it’s an improvement on the previous look of the photobooth:
“The photo booth has not changed for 50 years. This is very sexy. The others were very ugly.”
Though there’s nothing particularly offensive with Mr. Starck’s design, I think a number of us would argue that photobooth design in general has changed in the last fifty years, in a direction straight downhill, becoming less attractive and more boring and lifeless with each re-design.
Then again, Mr. Crasnianski used Claudia Schiffer as a reference to describe this new booth; with no disrespect to Ms. Schiffer, Mr. Crasniasnki might be a few decades behind the times to begin with.
See another photo here.
Over the past week or so, we’ve made made additions to nearly every section of the site. The contributions keep rolling in (thanks, dear readers) and we’ve also had a moment or two to delve into the vastness that is the “Photobooth.net To-Do” folder, shrinking it ever so slightly. Here’s a tally of what’s new:
Photobooth locations:
Barbary, Philadelphia, PA
Highline, Seattle, WA
Album covers:
Stinky Toys, by the French punk band Stinky Toys.
Movies:
The Comebacks (2007)
The Joneses (2009)
A Casa de Alice (2007)
TV Shows:
“Quints by Surprise,” in which the family squeeze into a photobooth at an Amy’s Ice Cream location in Austin, Texas.
TV Commercials:
A JCPenney spot partially set in a photobooth.
A series of three commercials for French social security, all set in a photobooth: Rene, Paul, and Philippe et Isabelle.
Music Videos:
“Touch a New Day” by Lena Meyer-Landrut
“Never Said” by Liz Phair
In Print:
Emily Blunt in a photobooth in Interview Magazine.
Shots: A Magazine about Fine Photography, a 1989 large-format photography zine special issue dedicated to photobooths.
Thanks to news from two Paris-based photobooth groups, La Joyeuse de Photographie and Foto Automat France, we have a burst of news from the new photobooth hotspot of Europe.
First, we have a new listing for Foto Automat France’s black and white photobooth at the Cinematheque Francaise, a perfect location for this mini-film studio. Foto Automat France is also running a black and white machine at Au vieux Saumur, one of the oldest bars in Paris.
From La Joyeuse, we have two new listings and one change. First, Le 104, where the striking red-striped machine has been replaced by a familiar machine, the photobooth that once lived at the Empty Bottle in Chicago.
At Citadium, the largest street culture shop in Paris, has a new booth as well.
Finally, La Joyeuse de Photographie is behind a collaborative project at Les Prairies de Paris called Labomaton, which features a modified Model 14 photobooth. Igor describes the project this way:
La Joyeuse de Photographie has teamed up with the photographer Fred Lebain by providing a photobooth in the hopes to create a unique project. The project, named Labomaton, was born as an idea that the silver photobooths haven’t yet said their last word, and that even today, artists from around the world could use these booths to their advantage in a creative and intelligent manner. We hope that this project could be exhibited by 2011.
Labomaton will participate in PHOTO-OFF, the young and upcoming photographers art fair (18–21 November, at La Bellevilloise, Paris).
