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THE PHOTOBOOTH BLOG

Archives: Projects

August 27, 2010

Our friend Scot Phillips, whom we met at last year’s Photobooth Convention in Chicago, let us know about a unique event at the museum where he works: an art auction whose proceeds will go towards helping the museum purchase a photochemical photobooth.

The Massillon Museum is seeking help in the form of donated artwork to be auctioned to help raise funds to purchase their photobooth.

The Massillon Museum will host its one-night only Photobooth Project: Silent Art Auction on September 25th from 7:00pm to 10:00pm in the Main Gallery at the Massillon Museum. All proceeds from this event will benefit the Photobooth Project.

Each donor will be recognized in the event program. Upon purchase of the photobooth, your name will also be included on a plaque installed on the photobooth.

If you want to donate your original artwork, download an application from the website (www.massillonmuseum.org and click on the Support tab) or contact Scot Phillips at 
bsphillips@massillonmuseum.org. 

Donations outside the fundraisers will be greatly 
appreciated. If making a donation, just specify that you want it to go to the “Photobooth Project” fund.

The deadline to donate artwork is Saturday, September 18th. You may donate artwork from now until the deadline, just contact Sandi to arrange pick up/drop off - don’t hesitate. We greatly appreciate your consideration and hope you will help make the Photobooth Project a success. Hope to see you at the Silent Art Auction!


Brian | 9:03 AM | Comments (1)

June 23, 2010

Happy summer to all of our readers across the country and around the world! To kick off the summer, Jeff from The Art of Waiting has launched a contest centered around photobooths that he has invited us to help out with.

Head over to the contest page to find out more about it, and get going on your entry!

The Art of Waiting’s summer contest hearkens back to a simpler time. A time when waiting for your betty crocker leftovers to reheat in the sears roebuck oven didn’t seem like an eternity. A time when waiting for the television commercial to end was more of a fascination than an annoyance. A time when waiting 3 minutes for a strip of 4 pictures to drop into the slot was the only option. You know what I’m talkin’ ‘bout Willis. Old style, wet chemistry, dip ‘n’ dunk photobooths have a special niche in the analogue photo world, and as a staple of summer carnivals, festivals, and fairs for many decades, they seemed to be an appropriate subject for the summer contest.

We’ll be back in September with some outstanding entries and the contest results. Get boothing (and waiting)!

Brian | 8:23 PM |

June 10, 2010

During the 2009 International Photobooth Convention, we screened a short documentary that takes the viewer on a 3-minute tour inside a photobooth as a photostrip is being developed. If you have ever wondered what is humming and whirring while you wait for your photo, wonder no more: we finally got around to uploading the short to YouTube. The video is in real-time, so you can see what happens at each stage of the development process. The video might have benefited from a musical score of some sort (a la Sesame Street), but opted instead for the natural sounds of the booth’s inner-dialogue.

Tim | 3:29 PM |

November 30, 2009

I just returned from a brief visit to Europe where photobooths still abound in all the usual places (post offices, train and subway stations, arcades.) However, I am sad to report that 99% of the booths I encountered were digital. London was the one exception, and two of the photobooths there were the highlight of my trip.

The past year has seen the re-emergence of chemical photobooths in The Big Smoke thanks to the industrious efforts of two independent outfits: Photomovette and Photoautomat. As luck would have it, I hit the city at the perfect time to see activity from both companies. October 31st marked the closing of Photoautomat’s show at Cargo; the following evening Photomovette was hosting an opening party for their booth. I spent the morning of the 31st hanging out at Cargo, chatting with Alex and taking in the show.

Following a quick lunch of steak & ale pie and mashy peas (in case you were wondering), I met up with Carole and Siobhan, the women of Photomovette. I proved not very helpful in resolving a few of their remaining booth idiosyncrasies, but they were gracious hosts nonetheless. They were busy putting the final touches on their booth and organizing the venue for their party the following evening.

After parting company, I headed for the Tube to make my way back to my West London lodging. The subway ride was notable for two reasons: 1) I happened to sit beneath an ad adorned with a fake photostrip and 2) it occurred to me I had inadvertently slated my travel for Halloween. If you’ve never experienced it, trust me when I tell you it is slightly disorienting to experience a new place on Halloween. It certainly left me wondering if London Tube traffic was always as colorful, or if it had something to do with the holiday. See for yourself:

For those of you who missed either of the above-mentioned festivities, fret not, more opportunity awaits you. Alex’s booth remains at Cargo, and is outside in the beer garden. Feel free to stop by anytime. As for Carole and Siobhan, they are hosting another photobooth party on the 13th of December.

Tim | 11:52 AM |

October 3, 2009

The European photobooth scene really heating up after some lean years there in the early 2000s… In addition to the projects we’ve mentioned recently in Berlin, the gang from Photoautomat in London are hosting a show of photobooth photos in the month of October:

Photoautomat and the Arch1 gallery space at Cargo are pleased to invite you to the opening of the new exhibition:

EVERYDAY PHOTOGRAPHY

The exhibition is a collection of portraits taken in an old analogue photo booth situated in Cargo’s beer garden.

The opening night is on 5th October- we will be offering a free drink to everyone that arrives at 7pm (subject to availability)

“We at Photoautomat believe that life is what happens outside of our portable electronic devices. Our analogue photo booths breathe life back into everyday photography and we hope they’ll inspire your imagination as much as they do ours.”

For more information, visit their website.

Brian | 9:41 PM |

September 24, 2009

Photobooth artist and long-time friend of Photobooth.net Daniel Minnick is part of a show opening soon in San Francisco called Sweet Believer Exit. The show, which is at 2nd Floor Projects, will have an opening reception this Saturday night September 26, and runs through November 1.

For more information, visit the 2nd floor projects blog. Please let us know if you get a chance to check out the show.

Brian | 8:29 AM |

September 23, 2009

We have news of two photobooth projects happening in Berlin currently. We’ll have more info once they’re completed, but for now, here’s the scoop:

First, Photoautomat.de is taking part in the Berliner Kunstsalon with a project titled “J’adore aglisia”:

J’adore aglisia combines an ecclesiastic confessional and a photo booth in a new, unexpected and modern way. It refers to the well-known advertising slogan “J’adore Dior”; at the same time, it is also a play of words with the French word église (church). The name aglisia is an acronym for the Latin termini of the seven capital sins; therefore, it is an honest commitment to a new religious orientation which states: I covet sin! For a small fee, you can be redeemed from your sins.

For more information (in German), check out their PDF on the project, and visit the Berliner Kunstsalon site for more information on the event as a whole.

Secondly, Patrick Coyle, a London-based artist, will be in Berlin using one of the city’s photochemical photobooths to conduct an interactive project with strangers in the booth.

Patrick Coyle’s intuitive approach to his interactive performances directly contradicts the laboured objects he produces during the event. Often producing obsessively precise visual poetry, the result veers from whimsical ramblings to surreal contemplations. For KOMME, Coyle invites individuals to pose with him in photo-booths around Berlin. His notes written on the developed photos concerning the sitter and his relationship to them will be revealed at the private view. Participants hear Coyle’s comments upon their time together only if they attend the private view at the end of the week.

There’s more information about the project here. The photos will be on display at the gallery at the following address between September 24 and 26, so that the public can see the progress of the project:

ÏMA Design Village

Burstein Ostrowski GBR

12-14 Ritterstrasse

Berlin 10969

We’ll have more information on both of these projects once they’ve concluded, so stay tuned.

Brian | 8:23 AM |

August 10, 2009

We’ve been seeing and hearing quite a bit about The Dead Weather recently, a new collaboration among Jack White of the White Stripes, Alison Mosshart of the Kills, Dean Fertita of Queens of the Stone Age, and Jack Lawrence of the Raconteurs (another Jack White project).

When their first single was released online, the accompanying music video, for “Hang You from the Heavens,” was shot in a photobooth.



More recently, they’ve released their full-length album, titled “Horehound,” and have included a photostrip in six copies of the album. Those lucky enough to purchase a copy with a photostrip inside will win a trip to White’s record studio. A news brief about the contest states

The winners will receive an all expenses paid trip to tour Jack’s factory, Third Man Records in Nashville, TN. The winners are given round trip airfare, two night hotel accommodation, and ground transportation. The winners are also allowed a plus one for the duration of the trip. The last chance to redeem is August 15th.

The contest is publicized on the band’s website, where you can view the video.

Readers might remember that the Kills have also used photobooth photos in their album covers, and have several hundred photostrips featured on their website.

Brian | 6:15 AM |

April 22, 2009

While it’s 99% tedious photos of ‘tweens mugging for the camera in an Apple Store, our RSS feed for Flickr photos tagged with the word ‘photobooth’ still manages to turn up some interesting pictures every once in awhile. Last week, I spotted what looked like a photobooth photo blown up to cover the side of a building, and in contacting the artist, I was happy to find out more about the project, and others like it that he’s been working on over the years.



Pierre Fraenkel’s work often involves the public presentation of found photos, blown up to varying degrees of massiveness. As he describes his latest project, “Unknown little boy,”

I made a collage of an unknown little boy’s ID photograph. In my collages, I very often like showing people I meet, but above all, I like showing unknown people - either old photographs from a flea market or an antique shop, or an ID photograph found on the ground.

I’m fond of the slightly strained and forced smile of the kid. And then, there’s this hand - whose hand is it? His mother’s? From his clothes and his haircut as well as the quality of the photo, I would say the photograph was taken at the end of the 70s.

The project was done for the 2009 KKO Festival in Altkirch, France, and since we first saw the photo, the boy has now been joined by an unknown girl, as well. We’ve got some more info in our Projects section, and much more can be found on Pierre’s website.

UPDATE: For the Francophones among our readers, a local TV news interview story about the project.

Brian | 9:09 PM |

April 17, 2009

In the run-up to the Photobooth Convention, we had to put a few stories and bits of news on the back burner while we were in Chicago. Now that the dust has settled, it’s time to get those up on the site, and we’re starting with a show that opened more than 1500 miles away from Chicago on the same night as the opening of the Convention: Picture Yourself Here: The Photobooth Show at the Flagstaff Photography Center in Flagstaff, Arizona.



The show, which runs through June 13, is a look at the photostrip collection amassed over the course of the past two years by FPC’s managing director, Jason Hasenbank. Described as “part self-portrait show, part anonymous found object, part candid look at the residents and visitors to downtown Flagstaff,” the show features a collection of “over 2,000 individual images of portraits, body parts, inanimate objects and expressions from our emotional spectrum.” Visitors are encouraged to add their own photos to the collection, and the center offers a scanning and enlarging service to allow people to share the photostrips with family and friends

We’re awaiting a photo of the booth and a sample photostrip to add the Flagstaff Photography Center’s booth to our newly-revamped Photobooth Directory. Thanks to Jason at the FPC for letting us know about the event.

UPDATE: The Flagstaff Photography Center’s booth is now listed in our directory.

Brian | 9:05 AM |

April 15, 2009

So, it’s been a week or so since it ended, and the 2009 International Photobooth Convention is retreating in our collective rear view mirror. Those attendees who made the trek from the U.K., from New York and San Francisco, from Vermont and Massachusetts, from Minnesota and Ohio, and from around the greater Chicago area, have all returned home. The organizers have left Logan Square for far flung Los Angeles, St Louis, and Oak Park, and it’s time to reflect on what went on during the night and long day of the event.

From my perspective, the event was a huge success. Thanks to the hard work of a lot of people, not the least of whom were Anthony, providing his photobooths and preparing the event on the ground in Chicago; Tim, bringing in folks from all over the country and keeping things under control with his unflappable cool; and our hosts at Center Portion Sheila and Greg, we had a smooth and relatively chaos-free event. Without any major issues to worry about, we were able to appreciate the company of the photobooth enthusiasts, technicians, artists, kids, and passersby who attended, all enjoying the shared experience and the luxury of unlimited photobooth pictures.

Some of the highlights for me were first of all meeting Anthony, with whom we’d corresponded and spoken over the previous few months, since the idea of a convention in Chicago was first floated last August. Tim and I had been involved in our first International Photobooth Convention in 2005, just a few months after we’d begun this site, so this time around, I felt a lot more comfortable in the world of the photobooth, and had made a lot more connections, discoveries, and acquaintances that proved helpful in the meantime .

One such connection was with Martin of Schnellfoto.ru, who had gotten in touch through the website a few weeks before the convention and offered a collaborative project for convention-goers in Chicago to participate in. In the Schnellfoto booth in Moscow, various people offered questions to Chicagoans, written in Russian on cards and held up to the camera in the photobooth. Martin FedEx’ed the strips, with translations, to me, and I brought them to Chicago, where we distributed them to people to answer with a response photostrip. The project attracted a lot of enthusiasm, and we got some terrific, witty, and creative answers. I’m in the middle of assembling a small booklet of the questions and answers side by side, which we’ll make available on the site when I’m finished.



Steve “Mixup” Howard, the founding father of the International Photobooth Convention, made the trek from England, and, along with Nakki Goranin and Dina Stander, made up the core group of returnees from our previous convention in 2005. It was great to see them again, and to have their art and collections hanging on the walls of the gallery, just like last time. We made some new friends this time, putting faces with names we’d emailed with over the years, including Danny Minnick from San Francisco; Connie Begg, proud owner of a new (old) photobooth, also from the Bay Area; and Carole and Siobhan of Photomovette in London, who are busy preparing to reintroduce the photochemical booth to London after a few years of painful absence.



The panel discussion on day two was also a highlight, as Tim led a talk among the hosts and distinguished guests, including Anthony, Mixup, Nakki, and Nick Osborn of SquareAmerica.com and co-author of the fantastic new book Who We Were: A Snapshot History of America.

Despite the long series of late nights spent preparing, enjoying, and then cleaning up after the convention, we were even able to get in a little photobooth-hunting, as Tim, Danny, and I hit three photobooths to add to our directory: Quenchers, Weegee’s Lounge, and Bar Deville. By the end of it all, there was fleeting talk of doing it all again in a year (or two or three), so we’ll see what happens. Thanks to everyone who came for making it a terrific event.

Check out the official wrap-up page for the convention, and stay tuned for the online gallery of artwork and other multimedia from the event.

Brian | 1:04 PM |

April 9, 2009

We’ve put up another batch of photos, from the second day of the Convention, on Flickr. They’ve been added to the 2009 IPC set.

Anthony leads his sold-out “Altered Photography” workshop:



Some of the art and collections on the walls of the gallery:



Danny and Nick talk photography:



One of our younger convention-goers gets ready to take photos in the booth:

Check out all of the photos in our set, as well as the photos (and photostrips) of others in the 2009 IPC group pool on Flickr (thanks to Arielle for setting it up).

Brian | 4:17 PM |

April 6, 2009

After an amazing and exhausting International Photobooth Convention this weekend, the various organizers are still unloading trucks, cars, and suitcases, so it will take bit before we can get a full run-down on the events and highlights, but for now, we’ll put up a few photos and videos to give those who weren’t able to make it an idea of what it was like.





Check out the full set of photos on Flickr.

We took some video over the weekend, some of which we’ve already posted below. More is on the way, so check out a few videos on Vimeo.

And finally, we designed some t-shirts and debuted them at the Convention. Currently there are two in the entire world, one for each half of Photobooth.net, but we’d love to see some more around. Order a shirt, take a photostrip of yourself wearing it, and send it our way! Check out our Photobooth.net t-shirts at Spreadshirt.

Brian | 9:22 PM |

March 3, 2009

Your 2009 International Photobooth Convention organizers are hard at work preparing for the event from their respective corners of the country as the big day gets ever closer. We’re now just one month away from the opening night, April 3, at Center Portion in Chicago.

We’ve had a lot of interest via email and through our Facebook group, and would encourage all photobooth artists, collectors, and experimenters out there to contribute to the event, whether or not you can attend. As part of the convention, we’ll be curating a group show of art created in and inspired by the photobooth as well as collections of vernacular or found photobooth photos. Check out the Call for Entries (PDF) if you’re interested in submitting a piece or collection for the show.

Brian | 2:49 PM |

February 18, 2009

As part of the 2009 International Photobooth Convention to be held in Chicago in April, we’ll be putting on a group show of art created in and inspired by the photobooth as well as collections of vernacular or found photobooth photos.

We’ve posted a Call for Entries (PDF) which we encourage you to download and check out if you’re interested in submitting a piece or collection for the show.

The text of the Call for Entries follows:

2009 International Photobooth Convention Group Show

CALL FOR ENTRIES

The 2009 International Photobooth Convention is now accepting entries for a group show at Center Portion in Chicago, Illinois, to be held April 3-4, 2009. The exhibition seeks to showcase artwork created in and inspired by the photobooth, as well as collections of vernacular or found photobooth photos. The show is open for entry to all artists working in any media, so long as they utilize or reference the photobooth. All entries will be included in an accompanying digital gallery on Photobooth.net, while selected artists will be asked to show their work at Center Portion for the duration of the Convention.

For review by the show’s curators, please submit digital files of your entry. Files should be in jpeg format at 300 dpi. Please provide a short bio, artist statement, and any other pertinent information (in PDF or .doc format). Digital files may be uploaded using the following address:

http://www.photobooth.net/convention/submit

Digital submission entry deadline: March 15th, 2009. Selected artists for the International Photobooth Convention Group Show will be contacted by March 20th with shipping instructions.

Please direct all questions to convention@photobooth.net

We look forward to your contributions to the event.

Brian | 8:46 AM |

February 2, 2009

Photobooth.net and 312photobooth.com are very pleased to announce the 2009 International Photobooth Convention, a two-day event featuring photobooth art, workshops, lectures, projects, and of course, free photochemical photobooths. The event will be held at the Center Portion artist project space in Chicago’s Logan Square, Friday and Saturday April 3rd and 4th, 2009.

We were last involved in the International Photobooth Convention back in 2005 in St Louis, held just a few weeks after we launched Photobooth.net. In the four years since then, we’ve learned a lot and made a lot of connections around the world, which ought to make this year’s event even bigger and better than the last.

The convention is being organized by the same group that put the 2005 event together, Tim and Brian from Photobooth.net and Mr. Mixup, joined this time by Anthony Vizzari of 312photobooth.com, who is graciously sponsoring the event and organizing the event on the ground in Chicago.

We will be sketching out the schedule for the event over the next few weeks, so stay tuned to the convention page for more details as they’re finalized.

We hope some of our readers will be able to join us in Chicago, and for those who can’t, we’ll be updating the blog throughout the event, as well as following what’s going on through our Twitter account, so be sure to follow along if you’re interested.

For those interested in submitting work for our photobooth gallery show, we’ll be announcing our call for entries in the next few days. Please send any questions about the show, or the convention in general, to the convention organizers, and we hope to see many of you in Chicago in April!

Brian | 8:40 AM |

September 23, 2008

In July, we noted an upcoming show of photobooth photos in Hamburg, Germany, called Wait Until Dry, with photos from the collection of Photobooth.net contributor Klaas Dierks as well as two other artists. Klaas has sent in photos from the show as well as an account of the event:

We decided to present 22 frames with series of booth pix that were on one hand arranged rather freely on the grounds of similarity and/or difference, and on the other hand overviews over people during different times, say the 30s, 40s, 60s, 70s.

We also had a series depicting the same person over a period from 1929-1944 in 14 photos. All in all we showed approximately 220 photobooth pix out of a collected 4000.

From left to right: Irina Ruppert, Klaas Dierks, Sven Heckmann selecting the photos for the exhibition

Opening night at the “Raum für photographie.”

View of the exhibition venue

Exhibition-room

Thanks to Klaas for the photos, and we encourage anyone else involved in a photobooth show or anyone who attends one to send us photos and tell us all about it.

Brian | 10:31 PM |

September 13, 2008

As we near the end of Book Week, we’re taking a look at another excellent recent photobooth book from Europe, Irene Stutz’s Das Einfränklerimperium. We covered the book when it was released in December of last year, but it deserves another look now that we have a copy (thanks again to Irene and Tobias for getting the book across the ocean to me).

The book, which originated from Stutz’s thesis project for a visual communications degree from Zurich University of the Arts, tells the history of Schnellphoto AG, the Swiss photobooth company that ran photobooths around the country for more than four decades.

Through essays, photographs, and interviews, Stutz tells the story of Christoph and Martin Balke, the brothers who ran Schnellphoto, from the 1960s until 2007, when the photochemical booths were phased out. Not only is the book a comprehensive history of the company, and of a nation’s relationship with its photobooths, but it contains a stunning series of mostly black-and-white photographs of not only the photobooths themselves, but of everything that made up the world of the photobooths: offices, manuals, equipment, spare parts, maps, charts, letters, and files. Stutz comprehensively documents the world of equipment, paper, and machinery that helped Schnellphoto design, manage, repair, and market the photobooths.

If you are interested in learning about how a photobooth works, and want to learn about the dying art of running a photobooth business, this book is a must, and Stutz’s photos are not only technically and historically illuminating, but they are beautiful portraits in their own right.



The book also includes hundreds of photobooth photos, most in that uniquely Swiss horizontal orientation, as well as advertisements, newspaper articles, cartoons, and other ephemera related to the booths. My German is a little better than my Italian, so the text is a little more comprehensible than in some of the other works I’ve profiled this week, and they are fascinating, on everything from the components of the company - the factory, the patent, the machinery, the paper, and chemicals that combine to make a photobooth - to the role of the photobooth in creating friendships, and the place of the photobooth in the digital world.



The book is widely available online, and is well worth seeking out. It is a testament to Stutz’s devotion to these booths, and to her talent as a photographer and writer, and will stand as the definitive story of photobooths in Switzerland. Let’s hope enthusiasts in other countries are inspired to create similar histories of their own.

Visit the website for the book for more information.

Brian | 6:00 PM |

September 11, 2008

More than two years ago, we mentioned a recent book by the photobooth artist Jan Wenzel titled Fotofix. I didn’t yet have a copy of the book, but promised a review as soon as I got ahold of one. Well, the book came quickly, but the review, obviously, did not.

Better late than never, I say, and don’t let our tardiness in getting to the book encourage you to do the same; Fotofix is a phenomenal collection of some of the most awe-inspiring photobooth art you’ll ever see. Wenzel takes the familiar confines of the photobooth and slowly explodes them with a series of images made up of four or five (or more) photostrips laid next to one another. From the first image, a dresser floating on a green background in five photostrips, through to an entire room rendered in eight parallel photostrips, the reader is left in awe of Wenzel’s absolute control over the space a photobooth affords, and his creativity and ingenuity in conceiving and executing his constructions.



In an excellent essay that opens the book, titled “From the Garbage into the Booth — Or: Instant Pictures of Topsyturvy Everyday Life,” Wenzel tells of how photobooths first came to East Germany after the fall of the wall and the reunification of Germany. The machines got an unprecedented amount of use because “just about everyone needed new photos for passports and I.D. cards, while those who had already been made redundant by the first summer after German Reunification needed pictures for their job-application forms.”

The book is really a must for any photobooth enthusiast; it’s difficult to express the sense of incredulity you get looking through some of the images Wenzel has created, and the work is a testament to the versatility and power of the photobooth. The book is widely available through online booksellers, and is well worth checking out.

Brian | 9:07 PM |

September 7, 2008

In the first installment of a week-long look at new and recent photobooth books, we’ve got a copy of Dan Zelinsky and the Musée Mécanique’s wonderful new creation, Lost & Found at the Musée Mécanique. Styled like a pin-bound fan-style book of paint samples, the book is an actual-size reproduction of more than 150 photostrips left behind and collected at the San Francisco institution over the last 35 years.

The Musée, home to mechanical musical instruments, arcade games, fortune-telling machines, and two great black and white booths (1 and 2) began as the collection of Edward Zelinsky, and is now under the care of his son Dan Zelinsky, who assembled this book.

During a trip to the Musée in February, we learned about Dan’s plans for the book, and we’re very happy to see it has become a reality.

You can buy the book in person if you’re in San Francisco (and if you’re passing through, a trip to Pier 45 is a must), or you can order the book on the Musée’s website. Let them know you heard about it here; we don’t get anything out of it, we’re just curious.

Brian | 10:09 PM |

July 20, 2008

We’ve got a lot of photobooth news to get off our desks and into the archive, so we’re putting it all together into one mega-post. First, we start with a video interview on MTV.com with Sub Pop’s vice president, Megan Jasper, as she gives a tour of the offices, including their in-house photobooth, not far from the soda machine that dispenses 75¢ Rainier beer. Nice. We’ve mentioned their booth before, and you can also check out more bands in the photobooth on their blog.

Secondly, we heard from Jeff from Comedy Photobooth, who let us know about the videos of comedians telling jokes inside photobooths - and if you were curious, all of the videos are shot inside photochemical booths. We’ve got the site listed in our Projects section now, and we’ll watch as it grows.

We’ve neglected to mention the ubiquitous Tonight Show “phony photobooth,” a series of videos which show unwitting photobooth-goers being freaked out by a talking photobooth, but it’s out there, and everyone seems to have seen it. Along those lines, we came across another photobooth prank video, in which a woman in a photobooth asks passersby to hold articles of her clothing, and it becomes apparent she’s taking off all her clothes in the booth. The clip seems to have originated on a Fox reality show called “Sexy Cam” (anyone ever heard of it? No? Didn’t think so), and the booth setting looks suspiciously like a mall in Canada.

And speaking of Canada, on an altogether much more interesting note, we caught word of a show in Vancouver called “Requiem for a Photobooth: 3 punk bands, 4 shots, 1 minute of silence,” by the artist Femke van Delft. More information on the project can be found on her site, and on this local blog. The show seems to have ended this past week, and we welcome any more information and first-hand reports on what it was like.

In late 2007, we received an email from director Graham Rathlin, who was working on a short film set in a photobooth and needed a real booth to shoot it in. We helped get him in touch with the folks who manage Berlin’s fine booths, and a few months later, he sent us a link to his finished short, titled Little Snaps of Horror. You can view the film on icewhole.com.

And finally, from the Coincidence Department, we’ve got two “About Us” pages from Chicago-based organizations that use photobooth photos. Now, we know that Chicago is America’s photobooth capital, but even this is a little strange.



First, from skinnyCorp, the folks behind the phenomenon that is Threadless, a page featuring a number of shots from the same booth, which you can see on their site and archived here.

And secondly, the Neo-Futurists’ Ensemble and Alumni page (archived in our Web section), featuring dozens of black and white photobooth photos of past and current members of this Chicago theater collective.

Brian | 11:06 PM |

May 30, 2008

Our friend and contributor Klaas Dierks has organized an exhibition of photobooth photos at a gallery in Hamburg. The show, called “Wait until Dry - Identities out of the Booth” brings together the photobooth photo collections of three artists, and opens next week.

The artists Irina Ruppert, Sven Heckmann and Klaas Dierks have collected thousands of photobooth pictures for years and present a selection of them at the „Raum für Photographie” (room for photography) in Hamburg, Germany, from the 5th of June to the 3rd of July 2008. The photos on exhibition were made in photobooths between 1928 and 1988 and originate from all over the world.

By combining the photos across time and place, the artists instill new meaning in their objects trouvée and let the imagination wander.

Raum für Photographie
Kampstrasse 8
Open Thursday through Saturday 12.00 - 19.30 pm
20357 Hamburg
www.raum-fuer-photographie.de

We encourage our readers in the area to attend and let us know what they see, and we’ll be posting photos from the show courtesy of Klaas next month.

Brian | 11:09 AM |

March 10, 2008

We’re always happy to help out folks working on photobooth projects, and we’ve received a few (very different) calls lately for photobooth photos. Perhaps some of our readers can help out.

First, Cameron Woo, publisher of Bark magazine, a publication about the “history, art and culture of canines,” is looking for your photobooth photos of dogs. Readers may remember a previous issue of Bark from 2005 that featured dogs in photobooths. This time, Bark is interested in “vintage or, at least, pre-1980” photobooth images of dogs in booths, and readers who would like to submit images from their collection can contact Cameron at cameron [at] thebark [dot] com.

Second, D’arcy French-Myerson, a photobooth artist in San Francisco, is looking for complete photostrips with the following specifications:

“Use a non-digital photobooth (the old-fashioned one with 4 vertical frames). Preferably, use a color booth with a sold background. If in b/w, leave the background white. During each shot, please shake your head as loosely and vigorously as possible without injury. Simultaneously, open your mouth and sigh. Wait for the strip to develop. Please allow it to dry and send me the original:

D’arcy French-Myerson, 1230 Market St. #728, San Francisco CA 94112

You may remain anonymous, or for credit, please write your name on the the back of the strip.”

From Switzerland, where traditional photobooths have recently died off, we received a call for photobooth photos of kids age 12-16 for an English textbook. The pictured student and parents would have to approve the use of the photo, so if you’re interested in getting in touch with the publisher, email us and we’ll pass on the info.

And finally, a project of a different sort, happening this week in San Diego. Jess Jollet writes:

On Thursday March 13th, myself and three other writers here in San Diego will team up with local 60s djs, the Deadbirds, and PhotoBooth rental company PhotoBoof! to host a creative and interactive night at the local bar Whistle Stop.

We came up with the idea to host an artistic collaborative night surrounding photobooth strips a few months ago. Since then we have been collecting photobooth strips through friends and family, and also bars where people have left their pictures behind.

Throughout the night the writers will be reading original stories in response to photobooth pictures. The Deadbirds have created a visual that will be a moving collage of the photobooth strips we have collected. Also Gavin from PhotoBoof has generously donated his time and will be bringing his own photo booth to the bar. Everyone will be able to take free pictures.

The five of us who have been planning the event have had so many interesting conversations and revelations about the magic of a photobooth. The mystery of what happens behind that velvet curtain and the amazing stories in each strip.

Brian | 7:50 AM |

January 18, 2008

More European photobooth news this week, as we’ve belatedly posted a little information about a recent project undertaken by Sleep Club, a.k.a. artists Dell Stewart and Adam Cruickshank, at Takt Gallery in Berlin. Simply put, they

…made some flocked Schlaf Klub tshirts and wore them while we slept in six different Photoautomats in Berlin. We took a lot of pictures and made this little installation as a result.

Check out more pictures of the beautiful and gigantic blown-up photostrips on their website. Thanks to Adam for letting us know about the project.

Brian | 1:11 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 |

February 16, 2007

A few photobooth-related projects and other additions to the site: first, we’ve mentioned the Photoboof project before, but we’d like to point out Alex’s photos of the inside of a great old Canadian black and white booth, one of four that was being re-covered for a corporate event. The photos document the inside, the outside, and the mechanical innards of the booth, and are worth a look inf you’ve never seen the chemical baths and spider mechanism.

Secondly, a recent exhibition at the Stockholm Moderna Museet featured the photographs of Carl Johan De Geer, a photographer, artist, and musician who made his own homemade photobooth in the 1960s that allowed viewers to photograph themselves. The resulting photos, more than 300 of which are now in the museum’s collection, depict the artist’s family and friends, as well as artists and musicians, both known and unknown.

And finally, the most interesting photobooth project of late, the John Wilkes Photo Booth. The name says it all; check it out for yourself.

Photo: John Wilkes Photo Booth schematic, boothshotme.com.

Brian | 12:15 AM |

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 |

A recent project based in the UK documents the unheralded members of the punk generation, thirty years on, through photobooth pictures. The project, called 100 Punks, draws parallels between photobooths and punk:

Never more so was this the case, than with the punk generation. Like punk, the machines were cheap, instant and easy to operate, once inside, there were no rules, perhaps the only time the subject could be in total control of the image they portrayed to the rest of the world. Each hair colour caught, new relationship captured. Self-concious, self portraits of the not so blank generation.

Check out the project online and in various galleries and museums in the coming year.

Brian | 5:01 PM |

September 18, 2006

Paul Hudson, owner of Lawrence Photo in Lawrence, Kansas, has created a “replica of a curtained photo booth” with a live photographer and the results printed on a postcard, as part of an event called “The Photo Booth Project,” open to the public until September 23. In an article in the Wichita Eagle, Douglas recalls his first time in the booth, saying “I have a strip from a photo booth in El Paso, Texas, when I was about a year old.”

The event opened with a packed reception last month, and has proven to be a popular attraction. As reporter Chris Shull writes,

The photo booth is as American as hot rods and parking lot carnivals. Those closet-sized boxes coax giggling kids and proud parents into a cramped, curtained-off compartment, where a camera captures silly faces and stolen kisses and then dispenses memories in strips of ID-sized photos.

The booth is open during store hours until September 23, and we encourage any Lawrence-area Photobooth.net readers to check it out and send us a report and some photos.

Brian | 1:45 PM |

May 30, 2006

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.

Brian | 8:13 AM |

May 22, 2006

Another artist has been added to the list here at Photobooth.net, an American painter named Lordan Bunch. Bunch, who has exhibited his work around the world over the last few years, makes small, photo-realistic paintings adapted from old photobooth photos. More info on Bunch can be found at this Davidson Gallery page and this Museum of Contemporary Photography page.

Also added today, Arty Carter’s A Life In A PhotoBooth 1974-1999, now found in our Projects section.

“C.I. 1929” © 2001, Lordan Bunch.

Brian | 6:28 PM |

May 7, 2006

Last year, after reaching what I thought was the end of the line for appearances of photobooths in film documented or mentioned on the web, I started searching with other key words thrown in, so instead of continually searching for “photobooth movie,” I would search for “photobooth script,” or “photobooth scene,” or anything else that might bring me to another mention. Tim came up with the idea of just adding a random word to “photobooth” and seeing what came up as a way to find more obscure and hidden material out there, and I’ve decided to inaugurate this feature today. If it stinks, we’ll stop, but it seems like it might have potential.

I found a few random word generators out there, and chose to use one that creates nouns in particular, though I suppose any kind of word would work fine. The first candidate: plaster. And the first result: well, the first hit is for an entry in none other than this very blog, which brings me to some rules for this exercise: instead of taking the first hit, or even the second, I think it’s probably our prerogative to choose the most interesting of the the first few links rather than stick to any formula.

So, the first qualifying hit for “plaster” comes to us from a February 22, 2006 entry in The Washington Oculus, a blog by Michael Grass of the Washington Post. The entry tells of a recent visit he paid to New York City, where one of his souvenirs was “a strip of photobooth photos (at right), taken from inside a photobooth in someone’s apartment. Where can I get a nifty in-home photobooth?” A pretty solid hit for a first try, I’d say. I’d love to know whose in-home photobooth it is, and this begs a larger question: just how many personal in-home booths are out there (excluding Hollywood)? Having never seen one myself, I’m curious to know. Grass even provides a photo of his photostrip; nice, classic black and white. Oh, and the “plaster” in question came in numerous descriptions of the renovations to the home of the University of Michigan’s daily newspaper, in another entry on the same page. Stay tuned for the next entry and send in any suggestions you have for a better name for our new diversion.

Brian | 10:50 AM |

May 6, 2006

Odile Marchoul, creator of the project she calls La photo-sculpture, has taken a photobooth photo every week since 1999. The photos, always in a set of four square, taken by a digital “Photo-Vision” booth, trace a remarkable timeline of subtle changes, daily moods, and life changing events, from getting a job to having a baby. As Marchoul writes,

it’s a project that i would like to inscribe in time & space, that will grow and change over the years. it’s a picture of my face, a face that is changing. in this project i consider myself as a living ‘subject’, a sculpture that is under construction.

The project has been archived in the Projects section. Thanks to JK for reminding us of it recently.

Photo: “vienna, 16.04.2003 wien-mitte, noon. I’m going to the airport.”

Brian | 8:09 AM |

May 1, 2006

The photobooth described on the From K to J: About the Booth page sounds fascinating and wonderful. After taking photos of the occupant, the booth adds its own contribution to the photos:

The booth is presented in semi-public spaces as a typical photobooth holding no denotation of its unique qualities. Users enter the booth, pose for 2 shots & exit as usual. During the developing process, the photos are “analyzed” & customized with forecasts consisting of patterns, symbols & messages.

While you’re visiting the site, check out the hundreds of wonderful examples (lookin’ good, for a digital booth!) that the booth has produced. We’d love to learn how the process works and hear from people who’ve used the booth. We’ve got the project archived in the Projects section as well.

Brian | 10:40 PM |

April 9, 2006

Thanks to a tip and photos from my cousin Jo, Photobooth.net has caught wind of a window display at the Saks Fifth Avenue in San Francisco in which manequins mingle around a photobooth presumably waiting their turn. The text displayed on the window reads “The Photobooth Project by Christopher Irion.” On first glance, it seemed that Irion might be the designer of the clothes being modeled by the manequins, but Dr. Google informs us that Irion is a photographer who travelled the country with a portable digital photography studio taking more than 600 portraits. This he dubbed “The Photobooth Project.” It is unclear whether the booth is available inside Saks or the portraits Irion took are on display in the store.

Tim | 8:12 PM |

March 28, 2006

Since we began blogging all things photobooth here a year ago, we’ve used a variety of sources to get our information. One of the more entertaining is the Flickr feed for photos tagged with the word “photobooth,” which often includes some great photostrips from around the country, and occasionally the Flickr member will be kind enough to name the location, so we can add it to our massive ‘to do’ list of places to visit.

Recently, though, first with the introduction of Apple’s “Photo Booth” software, and then with the advent of Shine SF’s photobooth that publishes digital photos through Flickr, the stream has become clogged with photos that, while fun, aren’t really what we’re looking for. That’s why it’s been a pleasant surprise, for the last few months now, to be witness to the growing phenomenon that is Photobooth Friday.

As Photobooth Friday founder Andrea at hula seventy writes,

…because I love photobooths and I love fridays. I think the two should kiss and make nice and be all lovey-dovey with each other and become like, the hot new couple on campus. if you haven’t already figured it out, I am unnaturally obsessed with photobooths. am thinking that this weekly feature may be just the perfect outlet for my borderline kooky fixation. I’ll be pulling goodies from my ever-growing collection of both personal and vintage found photobooth snapshots. will blissfully share with all who are willing to revel in 35 years of photobooth love.

That was January, and since then, every Friday, more and more photobooth photos have shown up either linked in her weekly post (the most recent is here) or tagged with “photoboothfriday” in Flickr.

Thanks to Andrea for giving a shout out to the site in her blog, and for organizing this weekly treat. It’s only Tuesday, so you’ve got time to get your photos ready for this Friday’s installment, and help put some real and interesting photobooth photos out in the Flickr world.

Brian | 8:04 AM |

June 27, 2005

California artist Rebecca Bailey (aka Baby Smith) has put out a call for submissions to a photobooth related art project. Visit her website to read more about her project:

Entry deadline: postmarked no later than July 31, 2005

Tim | 10:26 AM |

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