In an article published this week by the Associated Press and picked up by news organizations around the country (and in Canada), writer Ryan Kost takes a look at the current state of photochemical booths from the perspective on the ground at the Ace Hotel in Portland, Oregon, as well as with some words from Tim and myself. 

We’ve posted the article in our In Print section, and while it lasts, the article is available at a number of news outlets’ websites: ABC News, Newsday, OregonLive, Artdaily.org, The Asbury Park Press, the Batavia Daily News, and WRAL from Raleigh, North Carolina, among others. 

We’re curious if the article is actually in print anywhere, and would love to see a copy if anyone has actually held it in their ink-stained hands. Thanks to Ryan for the well-written article (and for not misquoting us), and welcome to those who are visiting us for the first time because of his piece. Have fun looking around!



Photo: AP/Don Ryan

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.

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.

Thanks to Katherine sending photos and sample photostrips from two more photobooths in Australia, this time from Melbourne. First we’ve got the booth in a covered market on Chapel Street, and then a shopping mall booth at the Jam Factory. Thanks as well to the couple she found taking photos in the Chapel Street booth who let us use her photo of them.

Just in time for back-to-school shopping, we’d like to let everyone know about our Photobooth.net t‑shirts, available in a variety of styles and colors for him and her in our Spreadshirt Shop. Tim and I tried out the first versions during the Photobooth Convention a few months ago, and since then, readers all over the world have picked up their own shirts and, in some cases, sent us photos of them in the wild. We know you won’t all have quite such a dramatic backdrop, but if you’d like to send us a photo of you in your Photobooth.net shirt — in or out of the booth — we’d love to see it and post it on the site.



Thanks to the wonderful Martin and Ira of Schnellfoto in Moscow for the photo.

Thanks to a tip from Stephanie, we see that Time Out New York has updated its somewhat-annual New York photobooth article. In September of 2007, we noted a Time Out piece called “Strip Mining” that the author, Rachel Sokol, contacted us about as she was researching. Looking at that link again, it seems the 2007 article has been replaced by this new one, with the much more pedestrian title of “The city’s best photo booths,” by Anna Brand. Both articles list photochemical and digital booths, and neither seems to make much distinction between old style and digital. Eight of the eleven booths in the original article were photochemical; now the ratio has slipped to six out of ten photochemical booths in the new piece. The booths are at Otto’s, Lakeside Lounge, Bubby’s, Bushwick Country Club, Union Pool, and the Smith.

We’ve added a new Manhattan booth which apparently didn’t make the Time Out cut, a black and white booth at The Living Room. Thanks to Gabby for the photos and info.

We are still digging out more updates that piled up during our summer hiatus, and present a few more today. First, Stephanie was kind enough to check out the new Ace Hotel in New York City, which we reported on in late 2007, wondering whether it would feature a photobooth in its lobby. Our question was answered: like its counterpart in Portland, the Ace New York does have a black and white photobooth, which takes credit cards only and pushes the upper limit of photobooth pricing up to $5.

The new Ace in Palm Springs apparently has a booth, as well, though we haven’t visited there yet, but when we visited the Ace in Seattle a few years ago, there was no booth to be found. Anyway, the photobooth at the Ace Hotel in New York is a welcome addition to the often volatile New York photobooth scene. Thanks, Stephanie.

Back in January, I visted the Motley Coffeehouse in Claremont, California, and checked out their black and white booth, which looked like it turned out great photos, but wasn’t on at the time, as the coffeehouse was actually closed.

And finally, we add another movie to our long list of films featuring faked photostrips, this one the highly anticipated and promptly critically lacerated Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus, starring Nicole Kidman as the famed photographer.

For many years now, we’ve heard of a remote colony of photochemical photobooths that have survived in Australia, far from the familiar “photobooth cities” of New York, Chicago, Berlin, and Paris. We’ve seen them in music videos and TV commercials, but we’ve never had any officially submitted to our Photobooth Directory.

We’re happy to report that we’ve received our first Aussie submissions, which came along with the massive group of photobooth locations in Canada that we posted about earlier this week.

Thanks again to Meags, we’ve now got two suburban Sydney booths listed, both in the Broadway Shopping Centre: one a black and white machine , and the other a color booth. We’re very happy to have these booths listed, and we also hope it encourages others, who live in Australia or plan to travel there, to take photos and contribute more Australian locations for our directory.

Catching up on some old news from late 2008, we heard about an art piece entitled “Photo Booth,” by American artist Lorna Simpson, which was sold to the Tate Modern at the Frieze Art Fair in London for $70,000. In an article in the Telegraph, Jessica Morgan describes the piece.

As curator of contemporary art at Tate, I am on a committee that buys new work every year at Frieze. We have a budget of £125,000 (the money comes from a philanthropic organisation called Outset). This year we bought six pieces. I was particularly pleased to get Photo Booth by the American artist Lorna Simpson, whose work we have been trying to buy for several years. She works predominantly in photography and video.

For this piece she gathered 50 photo-booth portraits of anonymous African-Americans that she discovered in thrift stores in Harlem in New York, where she lives. She matched these with 50 watercolour-and-ink drawings that are subtle and very beautiful, and play off the formality of the photographs. The whole piece cost $70,000, which is a large part of our budget but by no means an unreasonable price given that Simpson is an established artist who has been working since the early Nineties.

You can learn more about the work and see the work on the Salon 94 Freemans website.

Photo Booth © 2008 Lorna Simpson

Late last year, when I was preparing my Photobooths in Cinema talk for the 2009 International Photobooth Convention, our friend Klaas sent us a scan of a photostrip. It wasn’t just any photostrip, though: it was a set of photos by famed German film director Wim Wenders. When Klaas passed the scan on to us, it made for a nice first: the first photostrip we’ve seen of a director who has also used photobooths in his films. I had to take a quick look through Hilhaven Lodge to make sure, but I’m pretty certain. I can hear jaws dropping around the world, I know.

Not only has Wim Wenders used a photobooths in one movie, he’s used them in three: Alice in the Cities, Paris, Texas, and Faraway, So Close!

We thank Mr. Wenders for letting the strip be published, and Klaas for providing it to us.

In other news, we’ve added some more content recently, including a nice piece called “40 Under 40,” by Crain’s Chicago Business magazine, with photobooth portraits by our good friends at 312photobooth.com.

Anthony brought one of his photobooths into the Crain’s studio and had the 40 up-and-coming powerful Chicagoans take photostrips. The strips were used for a giant collage on the cover, for a table of contents, and to illustrate each individual profile.

The new Fox series “Glee” got an early start on the fall season when the pilot episode aired a few months ago. Tim spotted a photostrip in the locker of one of the main characters, and we’ve now got it listed in our TV section.

If you missed the three-episode series Wallander, based on the Swedish crime novels featuring Kurt Wallander by Henning Mankell, we recommend seeking them out, in high-definition, if you can. They were shot using the Red One digital camera, the first UK series to do so, and they look absolutely stunning, in a way that’s really tough to describe.

Two of the three episodes, which star Kenneth Branagh as Wallander, featured photostrips. We added one episode back in June and have now added the second epsiode, with a much more central role for the photostrip.

We’ll have more updates on booth locations, movies, TV shows, and music throughout the week.

Photostrip © Wim Wenders, courtesy of Klaas Dierks

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.