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THE PHOTOBOOTH BLOG

Archives: In the News

April 25, 2008

We’ve got a few updates this week, from the four (or at least three) corners of the media world. First, from mainstream TV, an advertisement that proves you can use a photobooth to sell anything. The Venus Embrace razor is the product in this case, in an ad that encourages women to use the razor and “Reveal the Goddess in You.” In one of a half-dozen scenes in the commercial, two girls go into a pseudo-photobooth and giggle under the heading “Goddess of Friendship.”

From the world of art and photography, we bring a two-page feature and brief interview with us here at Photobooth.net in the internationally-distributed magazine ISM: A Community Project. The piece, called Photobooths: The Art of the Self Portrait. It’s a nice piece, and it’s a great magazine, available at select newsstands or on ISM’s site now; we encourage you to pick up a copy.

And finally, another old photo with with what must be a great story behind it. At the risk of starting up a “Photomatic of the Week” feature, I thought I’d post this eBay gem, because it’s a great photo and a little unusual.



Not only does this Photomatic feature the great “Souvenir of the Nation’s Capital” backing, but the young soldier in the photo is sitting behind a prop with the body of what looks like the cherubic new year of 1941 painted on it, which makes for a great image. Written on the photo itself and mostly faded at this point is the question “Guess Who?”, and on the reverse is written the date “January 13, 42.” This date doesn’t make much sense with the New Year 1941 image, but it’s still a great photo.

Brian | 8:54 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 6, 2008

Another quick re-cap of photobooths in the news lately…

• I can’t seem to determine if the episode ever aired, as it’s not available on ABC.com or via any other less legal means, but a February taping of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition took place at the Hughes home in Louisville, Kentucky, and a black and white dip and dunk photobooth was installed in one of the boys’ rooms. A Louisville Courier-Journal article describes the home, and an accompanying video shows the booth as an integral part of the photo-centric bedroom.

• Also, thanks to Chris F. for pointing us to the new video from Million Dollar Strong, made up of Mike O’Connell and Yoshido, a.k.a. Ken Jeong, the doctor from Knocked Up. Check out the moments from the video featuring the Bar 107 photobooth in our Music Video section, or watch the video on YouTube.

• The blog at Modern Mechanix has featured two blasts from the photobooth past recently: first, an article about Anatol Josepho from 1928 titled “Penniless Inventor Gets Million for Photo Machine,” and second, a shorter piece about the invention of the Photomatic machine: “New Automatic Machine Delivers Metal-Framed Photos.” It’s great to see these hard-to-find magazine pieces archived, at least for now, on the web.

• And finally, thanks to Tim, each of our photobooth locations now features a nifty Google map right on the location page, to make your photobooth-hunting even easier.

Brian | 3:21 PM |

March 15, 2008

Thanks to all of our readers and friends who pointed us to John Strausbaugh’s article in yesterday’s New York Times. The piece, titled “Coin. Smile. Click!”, focuses on the history of photobooths in Manhattan, mostly through the lens of Nakki Goranin and her new book American Photobooth (which we’ll have a full review of when we get our hands on a copy). Mr. Strausbaugh contacted us prior to the publication of the article, and was kind enough to list Photobooth.net as one of the links in a sidebar to the main piece.

Read the article online (and be sure to watch the accompanying video). We’ve also archived it here in case it disappears in the future.

Previously, the Times has covered photobooth artists in 2003 and the photobooth scene in Los Angeles in 2005, but I think this is the first time that a photobooth story made the front page of the Times website.

Brian | 12:06 PM |

March 6, 2008

In what could be called a trend, or just a coincidence, or simply overkill, two recent window displays in Southern California Gap stores (and, presumably, Gap stores around the country) have centered on a photobooth theme. The first, seen in February on the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica, announced the winners of the “Gap Casting Call,” and featured kids photographed in three poses arranged vertically with a white border - a fake photostrip, but, as I thought at the time, pretty prominent placement of the photobooth idea in an ad campaign. I should have waited a month…



Spotted last week and photographed last night at the Gap store on Wilshire Boulevard in Santa Monica, two window displays featuring Andy Warhol’s photobooth portraits. First, a single shot of Warhol, flanked by some striped polo shirts. And second, four shots of Judith Green (last seen at The Warhol Museum) complemented by a cute red jacket and some peach flared pants. Or whatever they’re called. This particular Gap store featured three sets of these windows, alternating down the length of the storefront, which made an eye-catching display. The photobooth as marketing tool lives on.

Brian | 2:17 PM |

March 3, 2008

Some recent additions to the site, as well as photobooth news:

• Photobooth auteur Jean-Pierre Jeunet, the man behind Amélie, directed a video for ’80s French pop sensation Etienne Daho featuring animated photobooth photos, years before he and Audrey Tautou made photobooths hip again

• Adrian Saker’s 25 years in the photobooth, as seen above

• One of our favorite photobooth locations, Faces in Northampton, Mass., has replaced their color booth with a black and white machine.

• Grammy winner and tabloid idol Amy Winehouse was snapped carrying a framed set of photobooth photos out of her London abode as she prepared to move to the country; apparently this is big news, and you can find photos of the photostrips on this blog, and this one, and on the Daily Mail’s site.

• And finally, this bit is a little old, and we’ll have to do some more research to see what came of it, but Women’s Wear Daily reports on a vintage booth accompanying promotion for designer Stella McCartney’s products at Selfridge’s department store:

McCartney’s brand blitz at Selfridges isn’t just about commerce, however. Caricature artists will be on hand to draw customers’ portraits throughout the two weeks, and a one-man band commissioned by McCartney will play. The designer will also install a vintage photo-booth on Selfridges’ second floor, in which customers can take a shot of themselves for 1 pound, or about $2, which will be donated to the Red Cross. McCartney will make a personal appearance during London Fashion Week on Feb. 13.

25 Year Photobooth Portrait © 1982-2008 Adrian Saker.

Brian | 8:03 AM | Comments (2)

January 9, 2008

We’re continually struggling against the tide of New Yorkers here at Photobooth.net West, never quite reaching that magic place where we’re ready for the newest issue when it comes, so it took until this week to make it to the December 24 & 31, 2007, issue. The Books article, titled “Visual Trophies,” by John Updike, focuses on the history of snapshots in America, which he describes through a review of the book The Art of the American Snapshot 1888-1978, the catalog for an exhibition of the same name at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.



It’s an interesting piece, and the exhibition and catalog sound intriguing for anyone with an interest in the history of photography as told through amateur, vernacular, anonymous photos. Somewhat strangely, though wonderfully, the article is illustrated with a half-page photo of a beautiful old photobooth, photographed by Harvey Stein, with a woman’s bare legs visible where the curtain should be. Below the large photo are five smaller portraits: four photobooth photos and one photo which might typically be called a snapshot. While we were excited to see photobooths so prominently featured, the article has precious little to do with photobooths at all, and we were left wanting a little more.

Updike follows the history of the snapshot as it is laid out in the book, and when dealing with writer Sarah Kennel’s section on 1920-1939 (titled “Quick, Casual, Modern”), he describes the way the easy-to-use cameras that were becoming commonplace at this time made all sorts of photos possible:

A number of somewhat racy exposures hint at the camera’s significant role as a de-inhibitor, an enabler of what Kennel calls “home-grown pornography.” Nudes in provocative poses were among the earliest fruits of big-box, slow-tech photography in the mid-nineteenth century; something about the camera’s impassive appropriation of whatever is set before it invites, like a psychoanalyst’s silence, self-exposure.

He then quotes from Nakki Goranin’s upcoming book American Photobooth, in which she describes the way photobooth users were “stripping off their clothes for the private photobooth camera.” This is, obviously, an important observation and an interesting indicator of the power of the photobooth and the sense of privacy it gave to those who used it, but by bringing up this passage as evidence of the way the simple new cameras liberated amateur photographers, Updike glosses over the fundamental differences between a photobooth and a camera used by a typical consumer at the time. A photobooth creates no negatives, and those women taking off their clothes and couples getting adventuresome in the booth were safe so long as the curtain stayed closed. Once their photos came out of the booth, they had all of the evidence, but for amateur shutterbugs who wanted to get a little racy, there was still the shame of sending the photos away to be processed by Kodak or dealing with the knowing glances of a drugstore photo counter employee. For an entire article about amateur photography, it seems odd to base a point around the way photobooth photography works, as well as to illustrate the piece with photobooth photos. Photobooth photography sits somewhere between amateur photography, studio photography, and automation, and it seems that the distinction between snapshots and photobooth photos still needs to be made a little more clearly.

Photos: Top © Harvey Stein. Bottom 1, 4, and 5: Nakki Goranin; 2 J.F.K. Library; 3 Collection of Robert E. Jackson.

Brian | 8:49 PM | Comments (2)

December 18, 2007

More bad financial news for Photo-Me is not necessarily noteworthy, but the field day the UK press are having with headlines is somewhat amusing.

While the Independent goes with the mundane “Photo-Me stock dives 8 per cent after warning it will go into the red,” In the News and the BBC match “picture” puns with “Sorry picture for Photo-Me” and “Bleak picture for Photo-Me sales.”

My favorite, however technologically inaccurate, is from This is Money, who declare that “Photo-Me investors get the negatives.” Nice.

Brian | 4:29 PM | Comments (1)

December 15, 2007

Craigslist’s “Missed Connections,” home to love-lorn singles and crazy stalkers and fodder for hours of fascinating reading, brings us the briefest gem of a story, with a tagline worthy of a short story: “Found: photobooth pics in Murakami library book”

Date: 2007-12-15, 10:54AM EST

Stuck between the pages of “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle”, I found a strip of black and white photobooth photos: blond man and glasses girl, very much in love (or so it seems). If these are yours, I’d be happy to return them to you.

Good luck, little photostrip.

Brian | 7:05 PM |

December 13, 2007

We’ve got more information to follow up on our previous note about Irene Stutz and her book Das Einfränklerimperium: Die Geschichte der Schnellphoto AG, or The One-Franc Empire: The History of Schnellphoto AG. Irene was kind enough to provide us with a description of the book in English as well as some images from the book itself.

The book tells the story of Schnellphoto AG, established and lead for many decades by Martin and Christoph Balkes. For one franc per image strip, the brothers provided the whole contry with square passport pictures - their machines became a national cultural treasure, their company a veritable empire of one franc coins. Since the end of 2006, the photo machines have been demolished and scrapped since the special photographic paper is no longer being produced. As analog machines are being replaced by digital ones, the original “snapshot character” is being lost through fun image settings and verbal instructions. But it was exactly the austerity and sobriety of the “photo machines” that triggered the desire for spontaneous self-representation.

The book will be published by Scheidegger & Spiess in Zürich, and it looks like it will be available through the publisher’s website as well as Amazon.de. Tonight, Irene will be having an opening for her new book in Zürich, which qualifies as the coolest photobooth-related event of the year, and we hope to see photos from the evening soon.

Images and text courtesy Irene Stutz

Brian | 11:55 AM |

December 6, 2007

The New York Times City Room blog asks the question, will Stumptown Coffee Roasters be “planning an outpost in the lobby of the Ace Hotel, a Portland transplant that is scheduled to open on 29th Street and Broadway in 2009”? A fair question, to be sure, but more to the point, will the Ace be bringing another photobooth with them to New York, along with their painted brick interiors, camouflage bedside bibles, and their Rudy’s Barbershops? We shall see - and while we’re at it, when is the Seattle Ace going to get its own photobooth, as well?

Brian | 10:34 AM |

December 5, 2007

My high school German is pretty rusty, and I never could understand Schweizerdeutsch very well, but the images in a Schweizer Aktuell news report about Swiss photobooths say it all. An accompanying article about the “Fotokisten” being “endgültig Geschichte,” or “finally history,” has more to say about the situation. If any intrepid Photobooth.net readers would care to offer a translation, we’d appreciate it.

We’ve got more stills from the piece here.

Artist Irene Stutz’s fantastic site We Miss You pays tribute to these Swiss booths, and offers a preview of a book with photos and a historical account of the history of booths in Switzerland. We’ll post more on the project and on this story as we find out about it.

Brian | 10:39 PM |

December 3, 2007

A few items of note in the news recently:

First, a series of photobooth-style portraits taken by royal girlfriend Kate Middleton:

The 25-year-old girlfriend of Prince William was praised as she organised an exhibition by celebrity portrait photographer Alistair Morrison.

The prince showed his support by making a late appearance at the show. The exhibition - The Time To Reflect, at The Shop at Bluebird, in Kings Road - features dozens of Morrison’s celebrity photographs including Tom Cruise, Kate Winslet, Ewan McGregor, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Sting.

Many were taken in a special photobooth installed in the Dorchester Hotel in London and in venues in Los Angeles and New York as part of a project to raise money for the United Nations’ children’s fund, Unicef.

Limited editions of the originals are being sold at the show with half the proceeds going to the charity. All the proceeds from a £60 book of the passport-style images - complete with personal messages from the sitters - will benefit the same cause.

Also, more bad news for Photo-Me:

Shares in Photo-Me International, the company whose management was earlier this month forced out by angry shareholders, collapsed yesterday as it cut profits forecasts for the year.

Some thoughts from an English writer on passport photos:

I have just had my passport picture done. The result was not a pretty sight and got me thinking.

And a piece on photobooth enthusiast Nakki Goranin and her upcoming book, American Photobooth.

With an introduction written by David Haberstich, a Smithsonian curator of photography, the 224-page tome reveals happy, stern, wistful, goofy or blank facial expressions. Many images convey specific occupations, familial relationships, romantic entanglements and outlooks on life.

The author of the article gets Nakki, but doesn’t necessarily get the current state of photobooths: “Photobooths are still around, in malls and arcades, but now they’re digital.” I guess we’ll be going, then…

Brian | 5:00 PM |

October 3, 2007

Amidst all of the news of Europe going completely digital, it seems one booth in Paris has either survived or made a comeback. One of the most frequent questions we get on our discussion board asks whether or not there are any more real photobooths in Paris, and it seems that a Flickr user has found one, at the Palais de Tokyo. It seems likely that the booth is there as part of an exhibition, and if it’s the current show, it’ll only be there until the beginning of 2008, so if you’re interested, head over and check out the great-looking old booth.

Brian | 7:12 AM |

October 2, 2007

Everyone’s got a photobooth proposal story, these days. People Magazine tells the story of Brian and Alli and the Dallas Morning News talks about romance at the state fair. Both stories feature a scan of the photostrip, catching the proposal in mid-moment.

And in other news, Billy Bob Thornton, who has himself proposed a few times, apparently owns a photobooth, which he mentions in an interview in the Times of London:

“It’s full-on,” he explains enthusiastically. “When people come over they get in the booth and have their picture taken. I even have a book now, and anybody who comes by the house has their picture put in the book – even repairmen.”

Brian | 2:45 PM | Comments (2)

September 25, 2007

Welcome Gridskippers!

Two big-city publications have recently come out with their top photobooth picks, Time Out New York covering the Big Apple in their weekly guide in print and online, and Gridskipper highlighting Los Angeles with all of their online Google Map-mashuppy goodness. Gridskipper’s piece, to be more accurate, is actually Photobooth.net’s top photobooth picks in L.A., as editor Helen Jupiter was kind enough to solicit our thoughts on the matter. Rachel Sokol also asked us our take on New York booths for her Time Out piece, so we’re feeling loved again after getting ripped off in print (paragraphs 9 and 10 sound familiar?) and insulted for taking the paper to task for it last month.

The Time Out piece, titled “Strip mining,” lists a dozen photobooths around the five boroughs, including a few digital booths but hitting the mainstays of the Manhattan/Brooklyn dip-and-dunk scene like Otto’s, Lakeside, Bubby’s, and the Bushwick Country Club.

Last week, continuing its long-standing interest in photobooths, Gridskipper has adapted the Time Out New York piece into a booths and booze list that dumps the non-alcoholic locations and narrows the selection to places where you can pose with a drink in your hand, or on your head.

Brian | 1:20 PM |

September 21, 2007

So maybe we were a little premature in remarking about the photobooth/tattoo shop connection: looks like when push comes to shove, the photobooth’s got to go for L.A. Ink’s Kat Von D. According to a post on the Kat Von D Fanclub website, she’s selling her booth on eBay.

I know I know… It’s sad.. but I am re-doing the skate ramp in the front of the shop and it’s gonna take up too much room, SO! the photo booth must go….

I’ll be sad to see it go, but hopefully someone rad who will love it will take good care of it too!

The booth sits just inside the door of the shop, and is decorated with posters of Kat and a giant Lisa Simpson sitting on top. I have yet to visit the shop when the booth is functioning, but here’s hoping I get a chance before the auction ends.

Brian | 5:57 PM |

September 18, 2007

&otWho knew photobooths and tattoos went so well together? As the first season of L.A. Ink hums along and we watch tattoo artist Kat Von D pose with her friends and customers in her photobooth, we have news of another photobooth connection coming up across the ocean in London.

A Press Association report about a series of “urban landmarks; set up to promote Discovery’s new series London Ink mentions a photobooth sculpture:

A new urban landmark is being unveiled in the form of a giant statue of a man swimming through the pavement.

…

A week later, a similar statue will be installed on the concourse at Victoria Station, featuring a giant woman trying to squeeze into a photo booth. Her top rides up to reveal a tattoo of a pigeon.

The statues will remain in place for a few weeks before being moved to different locations across the UK.

We look forward to seeing what the piece looks like; send a photo our way if you see the statue.

UPDATE: Some Flickr photos of the woman in the booth - wow!

Brian | 11:28 AM |

August 24, 2007

Troubled times at Photo-Me International: yesterday saw a news report about the mounting pressure from shareholders on Photo-Me’s bosses to resign; apparently, the pressure was too much for chairman Vernon Sankey and chief executive Serge Crasnianski to bear, and today, they have been forced to resign.

According to the BBC, two of the investment companies that own a sufficient chunk of the company have been unhappy with management for some time.

…Principle Capital and Cycladic said they felt that progress with the sale and other aspects of a strategic review launched last year was insufficient.

They accused Mr Sankey and Mr Crasnianski of “operational mismanagement” and noted a “long history of poorly managing investor expectations.”

As we’ve said before, time will tell what effect these changes have on the world of public photobooths, which are just one aspect of Photo-Me’s business.

Brian | 8:50 AM |

August 20, 2007

It’s not clear what impact this news will have on the world of photobooths, but it seems that Photo-Me Intl. has found “sufficient interest in its vending division” to continue with the process of unloading the division on the highest bidder, says Reuters.

Brian | 4:03 PM |

August 16, 2007

The BBC is a behemoth of an organization, so we can’t expect their opinions to be uniform across their various arms, as we learned this week.

Last year, we were called on by BBC4 to be subject experts in their story on the state of the photobooth. Last week, we were chosen by the BBC technology show “Click,” as one of three sites profiled during their brief tour of the web called “Webscapes.” This time, though, they called us a “very silly” and “weird little blog.”

Admittedly, they had a few nice things to say, describing it as “great fun” and having “a wealth of information,” but the tone of the report came off as just a little condescending. But we shouldn’t be too worried, I suppose; who can take a technology show seriously that uses Internet Explorer to demonstrate the sites they’re profiling? Come on BBC, get with the program!

This is a weird little blog dedicated to the humble photo booth. While you may think there would be very little to say about these photographic relics, this blog surprises with its breadth of knowledge and humour.

[snip]

This is wonderfully pointless site, but the enthusiasm which has gone into its construction makes it a fun way to while away some spare time.

We’d like to think that for those who visit, we’re the exact opposite of pointless, but who are we to say… Read the online version of the text and watch the segment in their video archive.

Thanks to Paul for the tip.

Brian | 5:19 PM | Comments (2)

August 12, 2007

In the premiere episode of TLC’s L.A. Ink, which aired last week, we were introduced to Kat von D and her crew of tattoo artists as Kat oversaw the construction of her new shop. The opening credits feature the entire cast posing in a nicely decorated photobooth in her shop, and as we watched the shop come together, the only bit of furnishing yet in the shop was a generic gray Photo-Me booth, waiting to be put in its place.

When I visited Lucas Echo Park in March, I was informed that their photobooth was gone and had been sold to a woman for her tattoo shop; now it all makes sense. Kat’s shop, called High Voltage, turns out to be two blocks from Photobooth.net’s western HQ. It looks like the shop will feature the photobooth as an added touch, like the skate-ramp Kat requested in this episode. We’ll be keeping tabs on the show to see what develops.

Brian | 4:25 PM |

August 11, 2007

In this week’s ‘arts online’ column on the website of the Times of London, Photobooth.net gets top billing:

PHOTO FIT

Modern digital photo booths have taken the romance out of the self-portrait process (as exemplified in the film Amélie). No longer do we get those four separate attempts to look good. This community site aims to harness the power of its users to locate every last old-style ‘€œdip and dunk’ booth left on the planet, while inviting everyone to contribute their pictures and stories. There are also sections on artists who used the photo-strip style, including Andy Warhol. www.photobooth.net

Brian | 9:32 AM |

July 26, 2007

Photobooth Friday, the weekly online collaboration begun by Andrea and now with its own Flickr group, has of course caught our attention before.

Now Andrea’s local paper, the Portland Oregonian, has published a story on the group, which ought to lead to a whole lot of new interest and more submissions for the weekly pool. The article is online now, but will probably be gone soon, so you can check out the archived version here. Photobooth.net even gets a mention and a quote. Perhaps Andrea could share a scan or a PDF of the article so we can see the photo, as well - and see if all of those ellipses in the online version are really there?

Brian | 4:38 PM |

July 4, 2007

American Photobooth, an upcoming book by Nakki Goranin, has made its way to Amazon and is now available for pre-order. The book is being published by W.W. Norton and will be available on February 18, 2008.

Nakki has been hard at work on this book for many years, and we are very excited to see the final product. If the cover is any indication, we are in for a treat. The book deals with the history and art of the photobooth. We will keep you posted with any developments.

Tim | 1:10 PM | Comments (4)

July 3, 2007

Four directors of Photo-Me International have stepped down this week amid brewing trouble from a major shareholder, according to a BBC News article. Profits at the company have slipped, and a review is underway to determine if the company should split up its divisions, something we’ve covered here before.

Looking ahead, chief executive Serge Crasnianski identified some areas for growth driven by the increasing appetite for ID cards around the world.

He forecast that the introduction of a national health card this year in France could see demand for 50 million photographs, while 25 million photos could be required for tobacco cards in Japan.

Tobacco cards? That’s a new one for us.

Brian | 8:01 AM |

June 23, 2007

Photobooth news from around the country this week, beginning in one of the few states that doesn’t have an entry in our Photobooth Directory: Nebraska. Omaha residents celebrated the recent opening of the new bar/club called Slowdown, part of the massive new Saddle Creek Records development that will include a new art-house theater (Film Streams) as well as restaurants and apartments. They’re probably focusing their enthusiasm on the fact that Slowdown will have a black and white photobooth when it opens this weekend, but we are. Does Omaha currently have a photobooth? Who knows? But according to this Omaha.com article, they will now, and we’re looking forward to getting our first contribution from the great state of Nebraska. (The booth is visible in a few photos in the gallery on Slowdown’s website).

Comedian Patton Oswalt, who can be heard very shortly providing the lead voice in the new Pixar film Ratatouille, is releasing his second comedy album, a follow up to 2004’s “Feelin’ Kinda Patton,” to be called “Werewolves and Lollipops.” Oswalt’s record label, Sub-Pop, is promoting the album by giving away 10 unique, signed photostrips to random winners drawn from among the first 100 people who pre-order the album. The photostrips are the result of a day when “Patton came into our offices and abused our photo booth”; who even knew Sub-Pop had a photobooth?

Going a little further back, a found photostrip was Found Magazine’s “Find of the Day” for May 27.

And finally, we go still further back, to early May, and ask, What if they threw a photobooth party and we weren’t invited? Well, it happened, though I guess it wasn’t exactly a “photobooth party,” and there really wasn’t any reason for us to be invited. The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art threw their annual “Modern Ball” on May 2, 2007, and according to various photos and accounts, the walls were covered with massive blow-ups of Andy Warhol’s photobooth pictures, and a black and white photobooth was on hand for free photobooth pictures for the attendees. Nice. Thanks to YumSugar for tipping us off with photos of the photostripped walls. Read an account of the party here, and check out the pages of photographer Mona T Brooks, who has photos from the ball for sale, including pictures of the photobooth being used and the photobooth decor that evening.

Photo of Patton Oswalt from subpop.com.

Brian | 8:19 AM |

June 11, 2007

As we remarked about a few months ago, a photobooth that spent many years entertaining beachgoers in Asbury Park, New Jersey, has been on its way back home after 15 years at a store in Vermont.

Bob Crane from Save Tillie was kind enough to let us know that the booth is back just in time for summer and is being enjoyed by a new generation of beachgoers. The photobooth, a black and white Model 14, is located at the Shoppes at the Arcade in Asbury Park. For more information and photos, check out the page on Save Tillie’s website about the return of the booth.

The photo booth from Asbury Park, New Jersey’s historic Palace Amusements has been returned to the Shore community, 15 years after it was sold to shop keepers in Vermont, and is now a major attraction at a Cookman Avenue store.

For over three decades, the Palace’s photo booth produced strips of four black and white wallet sized photos of visitors to the Shore side amusement park. Now refurbished by the Save Tillie preservation group, the booth is installed on the lower level of The Shoppes at the Arcade, 685 Cookman Ave.

“At a time when so much of the amusements history of Asbury Park is fading into memory, we’re thrilled to be able to bring back one of the Palace’s favorite attractions,” said Save Tillie president Bob Crane. “Photo booths are a timeless treat, and this one especially so for with everyone who enjoyed it at the Palace.”

The booth entered the Palace in the late 1950s and remained in operation there until the Shore’s largest indoor amusement park closed in late 1988. For a time thereafter, it operated at Sandy’s Arcade on the Asbury Park Boardwalk, and eventually was sold to Slim and Pamela Smith, a Jersey Shore couple who had moved to Burlington, Vermont where they operated a clothing store. The Smiths operated the booth in stores in Burlington and Bristol, before donating it to Save Tillie last winter.

Save Tillie member Dan Toskaner refurbished the operating mechanisms of the booth over the winter and spring, giving it a new strobe light and making other mechanical improvements. In appearance, however, Toskaner said the booth will be completely familiar to those who used it at the Palace, down to a collage of very old photo strips including pictures of employes of the Palace and Sandy’s Arcade.

Save Tillie was formed in July of 1998 by fans of Asbury Park, of the Palace and of Bruce Springsteen to save Palace artifacts, including three iconic wall murals, from the wrecking ball. By directive of the State of New Jersey, 35 Palace artifacts, removed when the National Register of Historic Palaces building was demolished several years ago, are in storage and must be reused on a new building that eventually will rise on the Palace lots.

We’re also happy to report that the Palace photobooth is also our first entry for the state of New Jersey. We look forward to more contributions this summer from Jersey Shore-goers out there. Thanks to Bob Crane and Dan Toskaner for the great news and for the photos of the booth and Tillie himself!

Brian | 12:59 PM |

May 14, 2007

We have more than 20 photobooth locations listed in only three cities: New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Our to-do list of places we’ve heard about but haven’t had a chance to visit includes locations all around the country, but these three cities seem to be the national photobooth hubs. In the past week or so, I’ve visited two more local L.A. locations, one of which has had a photobooth awhile, Backstage in Culver City, and one of which is a long-standing store that recently added a booth: Pull My Daisy, in Silver Lake.

We’ve also come across news of a new photobooth at Quimby’s, a Chicago bookstore specializing in “the importation, distribution, and sale of unusual publications, aberrant periodicals, saucy comic booklets and assorted fancies as well as a comprehensive miscellany of the latest independent ‘zines’ that all the kids have been talking about.” The Quimblog has some great photos of the booth itself, its innards, and some nice sample photos from their new addition. Anyone visiting Chicago is encouraged to visit Quimby’s, take some samples, and buy some cool books and zines.

On another note, news of another step toward the death of the photobooth as a functional technology, at least in Europe, where dip and dunk photobooths are essentially dead already (more on that later): a new service allowing customers to upload digital photos which will then be checked for “biometric compatibility” and mailed back as a set of four passport-approved photos.

UPDATE 5/25/07: Thanks to Liz from Quimby’s, we’ve now got an entry for their new photobooth in our directory. And with a superstar of the literary world, Dishwasher Pete, in the sample photo. Nice!

Brian | 7:26 AM |

May 3, 2007

Time for another update from the world of photobooth news, from the 1920s, the 1950s, and the 1960s.

• Time magazine’s website has put up the text of an April 4, 1927 article titled “Photomaton,” about inventor Anatol Josepho selling his invention to a “syndicate of men successful enough to know a real gold brick when they see one—including onetime Ambassador to Turkey Henry Morgenthau, President James G. Harbord of the Radio Corp. of America, John T. Underwood (typewriters), onetime Vice President Raymond B. Small of the Postum Cereal Co.” for $1 million.

• A blog post by Christian Patterson informs us of an exhibit at the gallery of John McWhinnie @ Glenn Horowitz Bookseller titled c/o The Velvet Underground, which commemorates the 40th anniversary of the release of The Velvet Underground and Nico. Included in the exhibition, among various works by Andy Warhol and music and lyrics by the Velvet Underground, are “Original Warhol screen test film stills and photo booth pictures.” The exhibition is open until May 12 at the gallery, located at 50 1/2 East 64th Street in New York. We’d love to have a report on the photobooth pictures if anyone stops by.

• A fascinating story in the Lewiston (Maine) Sun Journal tells the story of a wallet, lost to a mugger in April of 1951 (along with the victim’s pants), that was recently found during the renovation of the Paramount Theater in Boston. The wallet, lost by Val Gregoire on April 11, 1956, was found on April 11, 2007 by Richard Bagen when he tore down a wall in the theater. The wallet was returned to his widow, Jeannette; Gregoire passed away in 2003. In the wallet, “There were several pictures of Val, an 18-year-old Navy sailor at the time. There were images of his mom, friends and a laminated photo of Jeannette, then his best girl. But there also were two pictures - seemingly taken from a photo booth - of Val and another girl. ‘Mine was laminated,’ Jeannette said of her photo, a pretty young girl in pearls. ‘Maybe that meant something’.”

Photo of the contents of the wallet, including four photobooth photos, by Amber Waterman, © 2007 Lewiston Sun Journal.

Brian | 11:17 AM |

April 23, 2007

As we mentioned last month, hypnotist Derren Brown lured a student into a photobooth in the UK, at which point Brown and his team hypnotized the student, brought him (and the makeshift photobooth) to Marrakech, Morocco, and then woke him up.

A video of the segment, or at least eight minutes of it, is now available on YouTube. The photobooth, equipped with speakers and hidden cameras, is set up near Richard Crichtlow’s flat, and - here’s the convenient, made-for-tv part - he needs to get some passport photos, and steps in. Watch the video for the rest of the mildly entertaining but slightly underwhelming story.

Brian | 10:50 PM |

March 5, 2007

From the world of British tv, we have a story about hypnotism, photobooths, and international air travel. Richard Critchlow, a 21 year-old student, was hypnotized in Wolverhampton London, England by Derren Brown. As this Sky News story explains, Critchlow woke up 13 hours later in an identical photobooth in Marrakech’s Djema al Fna market, more than 1400 miles away in Morocco.

Richard, 21, found himself in a chaotic Marrakech market after sleeping through a 13-hour trip. He stumbled out of a photo booth in the North African state after being hypnotised in an identical one in England. Brown told the Daily Mirror: “He was in a deep sleep. He had no sense of any time passing at all. His profound bewilderment eventually gave way to huge delight.” After being hypnotised, Mr Critchlow from Wolverhampton was whisked off to Heathrow Airport. The student was slumped in a wheelchair as he was put on a plane, flown to Morocco then wheeled through passport control.

Brian | 10:26 AM | | TrackBack

February 19, 2007

I guess I should have stayed in Las Vegas another week: thanks to a comment on a previous post, we’ve seen flurry of black and white photobooth pictures of NBA All-Stars in Las Vegas for the game this past weekend.

The photobooth was at the Palms Casino, for an “All Star Media Availability” event on February 16, and the photos showcase the goofy grins of Shaquille O’Neal, Kobe Bryant, Steve Nash, LeBron James, and other familiar faces. Thanks to Amy for the original comment, which led us to Kevin Garnett, and then to a few Google Alerts that led us to the other photostrips around the web. You can check out seven photostrips here and four others here (with some duplicates).

The photos, as seen on Yahoo! Sports, are credited as “by Jennifer Pottheiser,” (see more of her NBA photos here) which brings up the age-old conundrum of how to credit a photobooth photo. The subject is usually the one who initiates the photographic action by inserting money or pressing a button, but when you get down to it, a machine is taking the photo, and we can credit the subject who pressed the button, the person overseeing the booth, or the whoever grabs the photo out of the slot and scans it.

Photo: Shaquille O’Neal, by Jennifer Pottheiser/NBAE via Getty Images on Yahoo! Sport.

Brian | 1:51 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

February 1, 2007

Corel Software, the fine folks who brought you Word Perfect (or at least bought it and revived it) are currently promoting what they call the Corel Snapfire Plus Photo Booth Contest, in which they will be “compiling the world’s biggest photo booth photo strip” through user-submitted snapshots. I hate to be so critical when they’re obviously trying to rustle up interest in their product by tapping into whatever warm feelings people have for the photobooth, but they do such a poor job that we have to point some things out. First, of course, it’s a photobooth-style strip, but it’s sort of strange to say they’re compiling the world’s largest photostrip, when it’s really just an assemblage of digital photos that people send in. Are they really even going to print them in a long strip?

In their statement, they say, “Yes, we want those one-armed self portraits that everyone has taken of themselves at some point. ” So it’s not even really supposed to be in the style of a photobooth shot, but rather in the just-as-recognizable but much newer digital camera self-portrait style, slightly off-kilter but charming.

We want you to send us your photo, and we’ll add it to (what we hope will be) the world’s longest photo booth photo strip!

Are there other photostrips out there that are longer than the traditional strip, like, say, nine or ten inches long? Are they worried they might not make it?

Contest details: Submit your photo showing love, ready to be added to a long line of photographs (just like a good old fashioned photos booth) [sic]. It’s easy!

And the final instruction of the contest:

Visit snapfire.com on February 14th to see yourself as part of the World’s Biggest Photo Booth!

Wait a minute. Are we trying to make the world’s longest strip or the world’s biggest photobooth? Those are two really different things.

And finally,

That’s all there is to it! Keep an eye on Snapfire.com on Valentine’s Day to see you’re [sic] picture as part of the world’s biggest photo booth.

Hmm. We’ll keep our eyes peeled to see what the final photostrip - or photobooth - looks like.

Brian | 2:06 PM | | TrackBack

January 31, 2007

A press release from Skidmore College announces an upcoming photography exhibition from Joachim Schmid, whose “Photoworks” show includes all variety of photographs, including forgotten photobooth photos. The show will be presented at the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery, and will run through April 9, 2007.

As an artist who works in the medium of found photography, Joachim Schmid salvages photos from flea markets and archives, cuts them out of catalogues and publications, retrieves them from city streets, and finds them on the Internet. He then assembles series of photos as artworks that explore the emotional power and recurrent eccentricities of everyday photography.

The 111 images randomly excerpted for the Tang exhibition include family snapshots, ID photos, and photo-booth discards that Schmid picked up over the past 25 years on walks through cities around the world. Many images are creased, tire-tracked, torn up, walked on, rain-soaked, and/or sun-faded.

Brian | 12:24 PM | | TrackBack

January 30, 2007

Photo-Me, the international company responsible for photochemical and digital photobooths around the world, has hired Lazard as financial advisors to help them deal with a potential break-up of the company into three separate sectors.

The appointment of Lazard, which will work alongside JPMorgan Cazenove, the group’s existing financial adviser and joint broker, marks the start of a strategic review that could lead to a sale of one or all of the three businesses, Photo-Me said.

As we noted last month, Photo-Me has been considering splitting up its three sectors - vending, minilab manufacturing and wholesale manufacturing - and selling off one or more of them. In light of changes in the photography industry as well as the approach of biometric passports, Photo-Me has seen rough financial times over the last year or so.

Brian | 3:16 PM | | TrackBack

January 29, 2007

Phoeniz Arizona’s Trunk Space, home to a photobooth we’ve long had on our “To Visit” list, is having, as we speak, a sort of going away party for their photobooth technician, Mike.

More about Mike: He has worked at this job for 21 years! In the past 2 months he has lost all his profitable photobooths (the ones at Spectrum got robbed twice) and the other mall went digital. He has kept our photobooth from getting removed (due to poor sales) more than once.

The gallery, whose booth was voted best photobooth in Phoenix, is home to “Experimental Theater, Performance, Music, Puppets, Weird Stuff, Circus Side Show Acts, Fine Art, Handmade Gifts, & Espresso drinks, as well as being a meeting place for artists, curious people and weary travelers.”

We’ve seen a lot of photos from the booth on Flickr and LiveJournal, but we’d really love an official contribution to our Locator in the form of a photo of the booth itself and a nice high-quality scan of a photostrip. It would double our count of Arizona photobooths, and we’d love to have the ‘Space represented.

Brian | 9:45 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

January 19, 2007

A not-to-be-missed photobooth buying opportunity is happening right now, as a Los Angeles-based photographer is having a moving sale that includes a 1945 Auto Photo booth. The booth, which looks like a classic rounded-end Model 9 and seems to be in absolutely mint condition, comes with a stock of paper, chemicals, parts, and a copy of the original manual. If you’ve got $16,500 to part with or make the best offer received, the booth is yours.

A piece of downtown Los Angeles history, manufactured at the original Auto-Photo factory on Santa Fe. Sit down, drop a quarter in the slot, and the fun begins. The original air compressor fires up, the lights turn on and off four times, an amazing mechanical contraption processes your portraits, and two minutes later, out slides a vintage looking b&w photo strip. Ready to use.

If only we had enough time to start a fundraising campaign for the purchase of an official Photobooth.net Photobooth - this would be the one. We’ll try to keep tabs on where this beauty goes.

Brian | 8:22 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

January 10, 2007

Save Tillie, a “volunteer organization comprised of 1,000 friends of Asbury Park,” New Jersey, is an organization dedicated to saving the Palace amusement park and its iconic Tillie image. After the demolition of the building in 2004, the group “saved more than 125 internal artifacts from the Palace and the Tillie mural from the Cookman Avenue wall…; In the last few weeks, another prized element from the Palace’s past is on its way home: the photobooth.

In a great story on the Save Tillie site, the group tells the story of the photobooth, which had been at Palace for 30 years, making a move to Folkheart, a store in Vermont, in 1988. Now, nearly twenty years later, as the photobooth sat in disrepair and Folkheart’s owners prepared to close up shop, they donated the booth to Save Tillie. Folkheart was long on Photobooth.net’s radar as home to the only booth in Vermont, so we’re saddened to hear that it’s no more. Any other leads, readers? Now, back to the story:

On December 28, 2006 Save Tillie members Dan Toskaner, Frank Saragnese, and Mary Lynn Purcell drove to Vermont with a large trailer to rescue this valuable Palace artifact. Despite some dust, grime, and a large spider web inside the camera window, they found the machine to be in remarkably good condition. The exterior oak and white/gold speckled Formica is completely intact. The illuminated script “Photographs” sign still sits on top. In recognition of its history, someone stamped a small Tillie face next to a handwritten $2.00 sign. Best of all, beneath a sheet of plexiglass on the outer graphic panel there is a homemade collage of very old photo strips. The owners of Folkheart confirmed that these strips were already there when they bought the booth, which means that they were taken at the Palace. Save Tillie is hoping that some of the people in these photos can be identified.

The photobooth is currently undergoing restoration, and will be ready for action again soon; Save Tillie hope to return it to use in Asbury Park, where it began its life. Besides being a great story about nice people who care about history, the story is a testament to the power of the photobooth and the pull it has on generations of New Jersey amusement park-goers and Vermont store-browsers and all of us. We wish the best of luck to the folks at Save Tillie, and hope they keep us updated with the progress and the future of their beloved booth.

Photo of Save Tillie volunteers and the booth outside Folkheart from savetillie.com.

Brian | 8:05 PM | | TrackBack

December 18, 2006

Photo-Me, the world’s largest manufacturer and vendor of photobooths, has announced its most recent profit report, which saw a drop of 30% over profits of a year ago, according to a BBC News report. After turning down the idea of a takeover earlier this year, the company is now apparently looking into selling off one of three divisions.

“The vending side is more obviously of interest to more people, so that is more likely to have a bigger attraction initially,” Vernon Sankey, Photo-Me’s chairman told news agency Reuters.

“We have no doubt we will find people interested, but the question is at what price.”

The three parts of the firm - vending, minilab manufacturing and wholesale manufacturing - are all being assessed to see what the company will decide to do with them.

Read more news about Photo-Me in our archives.

Brian | 10:56 AM | Comments (2)

December 1, 2006

We learn today from Andrea at hula seventy, home of “Photobooth Friday,” that the beloved photobooth at Niagara in New York City has been replaced with a digital booth, and one that at least temporarily wouldn’t take their dollars, to boot.

We’d had problems with the booth before, but it was also the center of a few photobooth projects, including a Photobooth art show earlier this year. It’s too bad this booth didn’t survive, and we mourn its removal.

Brian | 1:57 PM | Comments (2)

November 22, 2006

It’s time once again for Gridskipper’s monthly mention of the photobooth (see September’s and October’s); this time, it’s a mini-list of the best bars in New York to document your night out with a photostrip.

Picture yourself in a booth in a bar, man, drunk on Red Stripe and tangerine Skyy. Photobooths are the best strip of nostalgia $3-4 can buy you. The delights are manifold. The cloistered privacy behind the curtain. The blinding flash. The minute long wait while the pictures print. And finally, four B&W photos stacked vertically, a portrait of your life over 3 seconds.

It’s nice of Gridskipper to credit us on the photo, but all we ever did was link to it; the original photo of Ashley and Nick is on eatmydesign.com, which we came across through Flickr.

UPDATE, 11/29/06: Not to just keep recycling Gridskipper posts that mention photobooths, but they’ve gone and done another, using a few photostrips from the booth at the Short Stop in L.A. Calling the Short Stop Hipster Biodome, the piece mentions the photobooth among the “pool tables, a dance floor… arcade games, [and] Bloc Party on the stereo.”

Brian | 10:46 AM |

November 16, 2006

Less than two years ago, Photobooth.net was founded with the goal of collecting and spreading knowledge about old-style photochemical photobooths around the world. Since then, we’ve been featured on the CBC , the BBC, and in numerous newspaper and online articles around the country. An article in this week’s Gazette in Frederick, Maryland, is a first for us, though, in that it references Photobooth.net as an authority on photobooths, without the story being about the site in any way. We know our listings on Maryland are woefully inadequate, but we’re certainly pleased to be cited as an authoritative source on photobooth locations in the article about the black and white photobooth found CineGraphic Studios in Frederick. Now that the booth is in the public eye, maybe a Photobooth.net reader can take a photo and a sample strip and send it on in.

Read “1, 2, 3 Smile!” on gazette.net or archived in our In Print section.

Brian | 5:28 PM | | TrackBack

October 31, 2006

Another update of photobooth news from around the world of the arts, from music to museums to found photos, plus a few cases of run-ins with the law:

• Beck’s new album The Information features a lyric about photobooths, as reported in a recent review:

Take a little picture in a photobooth/
Keep it in a locket and I think of you/
Both of our pictures, face to face/
Take off your necklace and throw it away

• The Melbourne Photobooth Project at the 2006 Melbourne Fringe Festival gets a review in The Age.

• In the UK, artist Gillian Wearing’s work is profiled in The Guardian:

In 2003, Wearing exhibited five eerie photos of members of her family. We seemed to be looking at snapshots of the artist’s mother and father; a professional headshot of her smiling uncle; a snapshot of her shirtless brother in his bedroom brushing elbow-length hair; and a photo-booth picture of the artist herself at 17.

• Across the Channel in France, photobooth (or should we say photomaton) photos are featured at the Centre Pompidou. Thanks to Pat for the tip on these anonymous 1929 photos. Check out this solo photo and this strip as well. (If these links don’t work, search for ‘photomaton’ on the site).

• Something we haven’t noted before, a wonderful collection of found photos, more than 200 in all, at SquareAmerica.com, “a gallery of vintage snapshots & vernacular photography.”

• On a different note, we have news of more lewdness in the photobooth on the boardwalk in Seaside Heights, New Jersey.

• And finally, the story of a rejected passport application based on the photobooth photo the girl’s family provided.

A five-year-old girl’s passport application was rejected because her photograph showed her bare shoulders. Hannah Edwards’s mother, Jane, was told that the exposed skin might be considered offensive in a Muslim country. The photograph was taken at a photo-booth at a local post office for a family trip to the south of France.

Photo: Photomaton, Anonymous 1929. Centre Pompidou

Brian | 2:42 PM |

October 28, 2006

In an article about a digital photobooth that projected photos of attendees on the wall at a Whitney Museum benefit last week, Moby voiced his support of real, honest-to-goodness old-style photobooths. When asked if he took part, he replied,

“No, I didn’t do that,” he said. “There was a long line for it. And I used to go to the photo booth machine…there’s an arcade on Mott Street, way down in Chinatown, that has this great photo booth machine and, it seems, this is nice but sort of a pale imitation to the real thing. I’m sort of a purist, I think.”

Glad to hear we’ve got another ally in the fight to keep dip-and-dunk photobooths alive.

Brian | 5:15 PM |

October 19, 2006

A few photobooth-related items of note in the news lately:

• A piece in the ‘Currents’ section of the Wilmington, North Carolina Star-News asks Where’s the downtown photo booth? The article seems to be a series of small commentaries, but the layout is such that the headline for each section looks like the rest of the body text, so it’s a little hard to read, but among headlines like “What’s worse? Being drunk in public? Or snapping photos of it?” and “Audience Nonparticipation,” about the fact that people haven’t been participating in this particular newspaper column, the author wonders about the lack of photobooths in town:

When I first moved to Wilmington and tried out different downtown bars, I wondered: Where’s the downtown bar photo booth? When I lived in Orlando several years ago, there were quite a few of those classic photo booths in downtown bars, and a constant slew of hipsters wearing scarves in July bucked up to them. I had several friends who had multiple stacks of photo strips at home. I’m talking in the hundreds. They’re like documents, proof, evidence of good time and bad. Plus, it’s fun to make faces and think you’re cool. So, where’s the local booth? I can’t think of a single bar where a photo booth wouldn’t do gangbusters business. It’s something the $1 PBR and $10 martini crowds could really get behind. Somebody needs to get on this.

• Next, a poll by Creative Bulletin lists the