First, a bit of history:

In a February 1970 Los Angeles Times interview with singer-songwriter Jimmy Webb, the author describes Webb’s upcoming album this way:

…[A]nother current project is a new album, with Webb compositions sung entirely by Webb. Jim’s been working on the recording for about six months: he has daily sessions—morning and afternoon, often breaks for dinner and returns to work into the small hours. The LP will be called ‘Confessions in a Photo Booth,’ but he’ll introduce the new material, all of it, in his concert debut on Saturday at the Music Center.

In an August 1970 Billboard column (see it here on Google Books), the album is named as his first on Reprise. By the time it was released, “Confessions in a Photo Booth” had become “Words and Music,” so the world was robbed of what could have been a prominent photobooth-titled album.

Continuing in the world of music, Callan Furlong wrote to let us know that his EP The Fool I Was Before features photostrips on the cover.

And finally, while browsing the aisles at Amoeba Music in Hollywood, I spotted this recent CD from The Living Sisters:

We have a few new locations to mention, the first not too far from (my) home, at Dexter’s Camera in Ventura, California, where Photo-Me installed a black and white booth this week. Thanks to Matt and Raul for letting us know about the booth.

The second is slightly further afield, in Riga, Latvia, where Kate Tyler found a color machine, one of the only original booths still active in Europe. Time for a road trip to Riga! Please keep your contributions coming.

Next, we’ll move on to television, where the photobooth continues to be a mainstay of current shows: this time, reality juggernaut “The Bachelor” took a turn in the booth. During Week 7 of the most recent series, the Bachelor and one of his ladies visited the photobooth at Orange Dracula in Seattle, and took some photos.

Looking back a few decades, Les Matons clued us into a 1960s French TV show, La Caméra Invisible, that featured a photobooth in an episode:

We were excited to read a nice newspaper piece on our buddy Anthony Vizzari and his company, A & A Studios, this past weekend. The original article in the Chicago Grid is here, and we’ve got it archived here, as well. Congratulations, Anthony and all the crew at A & A.

We’ve also added a few new movies to roster. Last year’s Academy Award-winner in the Documentary Feature category, Undefeated, features a photobooth shot of a young Bill Courtney, who would grow up to be the coach at the center of this story.

Going a little further back, we have a few more passing photobooth shots in the animated short The Moon and the Son: An Imagined Conversation, as well as in the 1984 West German film Wundkanal.

Finally, a French film about a woman obsessed with the photobooth who ends up meeting the photobooth repairman… Sound familiar? Well, it’s not Amélie. It’s Lucille et le Photomaton, a 1993 short by Sébastien Nuzzo that we’ve long been meaning to add to the site.

From the sign on the end of the booth that reads “Take your own miniature portraits / Photos in 2 1/2 minutes,” the “N” of “OWN,” the “S” of “PORTRAITS,” and the “S” of “MINUTES” are barely visible. If you look even more closely, you can see the drying slot at the right edge of the booth.

As we mentioned last week, Berlin and Los Angeles-based artist Fette Sans held an event this past weekend, Fette’s Photo Booth Party, at the Cha Cha Lounge, home to L.A.‘s best color photobooth

Over the course of the hour or so I was there, more than a dozen people worked with Fette to take strips in the booth that incorporated Fette’s photos, photos those of us brought, and both artist and enthusiast alike.

I talked to a number of people as we watched, waited, and participated, each of whom was enthusiastic and interested in the workings of the photobooth, and we were all excited by the wonderful quality of the Cha Cha’s pictures.

Each of us took home our own photostrips from the evening, but I hope at some point we can see scans of the collective work of Fette and her collaborators from this evening.

Thanks again to Joe for letting us know about the event, and to Fette for letting me sit in and take part. It’s always fun to chat with an articulate and enthusiastic photobooth artist. It was a great evening, and I hope her efforts inspire more photobooth interest and work in the future.

The book primarily uses digital photobooths as its examples, but features a few photochemical strips to demonstrate different possibilities. As Southgate put it in a statement,

The work I make responds to and is influenced by amateur photographic practices — which is to say a practice that survives through a social or seasonal desire (holidays, weddings, christmas). I discovered my obsession for Photobooths when I was looking for a cheaper alternative way into photography and I began this research by testing the Photobooths ability — both analogue and digital — to perform as an everyday camera. This developed across a period of 4–5 months and I was inspired at this point to create a book of my findings.

Southgate also has a Twitter account for the book, talking about the book, historical examples of photobooth art, and other photobooth-related topics.

We look forward to further editions of Southgate’s work. As she says, “Elements of the Photobooth is the first in the series. The following volumes will include people, animals, gardens and landscape.”

First, we have a raft of updates from the folks at Photoautomat.de in Berlin. A number of booths have moved from previous locations, and fresh machines have debuted in new locations, as well.

Check out the new photochemical booths at the following locations:

• Kulturbrauerei
• Markthalle Kreuzberg
• Prenzlauer Allee
• Warschauerstraße / Revaler Str. I
• Warschauerstraße / Revaler Str. II
• Weserstraße

The fact that these booths are constantly moving and re-appearing in Berlin is a testament to their ongoing popularity, and Berlin remains one of the world’s great photobooth capitals.

We also have a few bits of photobooth media from Europe: a French print ad for an optician using a photobooth, a graphic novel by Jean Teulé called Filles de nuit, and the film Le scaphandre et la papillon, known in English as The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.

And finally, an Italian giallo, 4 mosche di velluto grigio.

Both the front and the back of the album “Les eglantines sont peut-etre formidables” by the duo Brigitte Fontaine and Areski Belkacem, uses photobooth photos, as well. Thanks to Les Matons for these updates.

Stateside, we have new photos of the redecorated booth and resulting photos from Jack White’s Third Man Records and Novelties in Nashville.

Also, good news for Colorado: the state has another pin in the map at Fargo’s Pizza in Colorado Springs. Thanks to Brittany for both of these updates.

We’re also very happy to be able to add Nebraska to our list of states that can claim they’re home to a photobooth.

If you’re headed to Slowdown in Omaha for a concert, a party, or a pub quiz, check out their black and white photobooth and give it a spin. Thanks to Robb for the update on this booth.

We have a few updates from American movies and TV, as well.

First, a brief credit sequence appearance in the 1973 pickpocket drama Harry in Your Pocket, as the camera pans over the contents of pockets picked by the “cannon,” Harry (James Coburn).

Another more recent film, Safety Not Guaranteed, also features a brief photostrip moment.

Last month, thanks to Photoautomat.de, we made what to us seemed like a remarkable discovery: a mainstream American film starring perhaps the most critically acclaimed actor and actress of the last thirty years, with a scene set in a real photobooth, with real photobooth photos. How did Falling in Love, a 1984 film starring Robert De Niro and Meryl Streep, escape our notice until now? We’re not sure, but it just goes to show there’s always more out there, and it encourages us to continue our quest to uncover more photobooths in cinema.

And finally, we’ve got a 2013 commercial for Diet Coke starring its new creative director, designer Marc Jacobs (who has also had a photobooth or two in some of his stores)

I have been using photo-booth as a way to blur out intentions and ownership. I print my photographs large enough so they cover the whole range of the photo-booth lens and let them be re-photographed. The result offer this odd quality, something similar to those of found photographs.

With this event, I want to play with the real/fictional by combining people and photographs within the frame, blurring out people and people in photographs… By asking people to bring their own photographs, I also want to remix personal stories by switching photos and people, creating little scenography.

I plan on being there, and I hope other Los Angeles-area photobooth fans will stop by and participate in the project.

Most notably, this was the year that audiences around Europe got to see the most comprehensive and significant exhibition on the history and art of the photobooth ever produced. Curated by Clément Chéroux, Sam Stourdzé, and Anne Lacoste at the Museé de l’Elysee in Lausanne, the exhibition was titled “Derrière le rideau: L’esthétique du photomaton,” or “Behind the Curtain: The Aesthetics of the Photobooth.” I was honored to be able to contribute to both the printed catalog and the exhibition itself, and I traveled to Lausanne for the opening in February. After Lausanne, the show traveled to Le Botanique in Brussels and then to Vienna, where it remains open for another two weeks at the Kunst Haus Wien.

Back in the U.S., another international photobooth event was on the horizon. Three years after our very successful event in Chicago we hosted another International Photobooth Convention. This time, we gathered two photochemical photobooths and a major collection of world-class photobooth art in the sunny confines of Venice, California, and enjoyed two nights and a day of photobooth fun. Read all about it here.

The 2012 Photobooth Convention led to our first official publication, a 25th Anniversary Catalog celebrating the past and present work of the pioneering photobooth artists who first displayed their art in Rochester, New York in 1987. Limited copies of the catalog are still available for purchase; you can order them here, along with signed and numbered copies of the beautiful poster for the show.

We finished up the convention with a terrifically fun photobooth crawl in a hired van around Los Angeles.

As we do with every convention, we produced a collaborative project with those who attended. This time, it was a collection of Photobooth Shorts, movies told in just four photobooth frames. We still have a limited quantity of numbered copies left for sale; follow the link to get your copy.

On the site itself, we’ve had a busy year of updates. We continue to discover new photobooth locations ourselves, and learn about them from contributors all over the world. In 2012, we added 48 new photobooth locations, plus countless additions, corrections, and updates to other locations already in our directory.

2012 also proved that the photobooth craze in movies, TV, and print shows no sign of slowing. This year, we’ve added 24 new movies, 22 new albums, 21 new TV shows, 15 new magazine articles, 14 new commercials, 10 new music videos, and six new newspaper articles.

The year also saw 30 entries in our blog, from Jack White’s appearance on ‘American Pickers’ to more recent omnibus recaps of additions to our various collections of photobooth appearances around the world. 2012 also brought our first ever guest blog entry, a travelogue from Meags Fitzgerald about her epic European photobooth adventures. Visit our Archives to poke around the entries from the past year.

If we can read anything into these stats and highlights, it’s that the photochemical photobooth is alive and well in 2012, thanks to the vibrant and committed community of enthusiasts around the world, many of whom we had the pleasure of meeting this year.

Best Wishes from Photobooth.net for a joyous, peaceful, productive, and photobooth-filled 2013! (And Happy New Year from two of the youngest members of the Photobooth.net community, both booth enthusiasts in the making)

First, in the world of film, Nights and Weekends:

Next, the recent adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road:

The Dutch film Left Luggage:

Christopher Nolan’s debut film, Following:

And finally, the French film Scenes de crimes:

Next, in television:

From the UK, a social history documentary show, “The Secret History of Our Streets”:

“Dead Like Me”:

And another season brings another episode of “Modern Family” that features a photobooth:

A few commercials:

For Barclays personalized debit cards:

And for the Swiss company Sympany:

And finally, the ever-popular photobooth in a music video:

First, from The Great Park, the video for “I Know What I Make Isn’t Fine”:

From Mano Negra, “Pas assez de toi”:

And from Jim Kroft, “Canary in the Coalmine”:

New movies:

Tabloid by Errol Morris

The Queen of Versailles by Lauren Greenfield

Celeste & Jesse Forever by Lee Toland Krieger

21 Jump Street by Phil Lord and Chris Miller

TV shows:

A 2001 episode of Malcolm in the Middle

Last week’s episode of “Brickleberry”

Locations:

And finally, a new photobooth at a local favorite, Golden Road Brewing in Glendale.

After assiduously seeking out photobooth locations all across the world, planning itineraries around places where I knew I’d find photobooths for the last ten years, it was a pleasant and unfamiliar surprise to head to a brewpub for lunch and find an unexpected machine just sitting there, practically shouting at me “Shouldn’t you know I’m here?!” I enjoyed a beer and a sandwich and an unexpected set of photos to boot.