Steve Jobs demos Photo Booth, October 12, 2005

We’d like to take a moment to salute Steve Jobs. While we may have silently cursed the fact that soon after it was introduced, the “Photo Booth” application for the Mac filled our searches and Flickr feeds with photos of kids at the Apple Store mugging for the lens rather than the kind of photobooth news and photos we were looking for, this site wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the devices Steve Jobs created and the creativity he encouraged and enabled. 

The site is coded and designed on Macs and tinkered with over iChat and iPhone, but more generally, I don’t think I’d have the kind of interest in putting together a site like this, and in collaborating with people all over the world to make it better, were I not in love with the tools that we use to make it come together. So thank you, Steve, for the many ways you’ve touched our lives, and for the things you’ve created that help us do what we love with a little more joy and a little more magic. 

It’s time for some more updates. This round is brought to you thanks completely to our contributors around the globe, without whom we’d be, well, a lot smaller and less well-informed. 

First, thanks to everyone who’s written to let us know about the upcoming photobooth exhibition in Switzerland next February. The show, titled “Derrière le rideau: l’esthétique du photomaton” (“Behind the Curtain: The Beauty of the Photobooth”), has veritably set the photobooth world on fire, if such a thing is possible. 

We’ve heard about the show, which will take place at the Musee de l’Elysee, a photography museum in Lausanne, from folks all over the world, artists and enthusiasts alike. From the sound of it, the show seems as though it will bring together an impressive collection of artwork as well as an examination of the history, the technology, and the cultural impact of the booth. We’re working on a contribution to the show, and I hope we’ll be able to attend at some point during its run, from February 17 to May 20, 2012.

Next up, we’ve got a number of updates on locations, including a couple of firsts. First off, our first photobooth listing in Ireland! If you’re planning a trip to the Emerald Isle, be sure to put Shebeen Chic, a restaurant, bar, and music venue in Dublin, on your itinerary. Ireland’s only photochemical photobooth will be waiting for you there. We’ve been hearing about this location for awhile, and thanks to Imogen for submitting photos and info for our directory.

Another first, here in the U.S.: our first location in state of Indiana. Thanks to Trent for letting us know about his booth at Albert Photographic in Chesterton, Indiana. Our Photobooth Directory has now reached the magical number of 30 states (plus Washington, D.C.), and we’re happy to see the list continue to grow. Send us an update or a new location if you’ve got one.

We also have some new listings in some established photobooth meccas: first, Portland, Oregon, home to two new locations, at Spirit of 77 and Beulahland. Thanks, Victoria!

And finally, we have two new locations in Los Angeles, at The Smell and at The One Eyed Gypsy, both downtown. Thanks, Emma and Raul!

We also heard from Dutch photographer Daniel Heikens this week about his new book (available here on Blurb.com) of facial hair in the photobooth. He used the wonderful booth at the RayKo Photo Center in San Francisco to do his work. Thanks, Daniel.

Next up, we’ll be getting to some long-overdue updates to our Movies and TV section, thanks to tips from our watchful eyes around the world. For now, though, that’s all. Thanks again, everyone.

Thanks to Marc Bellini for getting in touch with us to let us know about an upcoming show of his photobooth art that will be taking place in London next week.

For more information, visit the Bicha Gallery site and check out a PDF of the press release.

If you’re in the area and can attend, we’d love to hear all about it.

We have a raft of updates from our readers over the last few weeks; apologies for the delay in getting all of them rounded up and put up on the site. 

First, a shout out to Guy Capecelatro III, the man behind the fantastic “Some Women” project. If you visited the IPC 2009 in Chicago, you would have seen a selection of pieces by Guy, framed original photos with the moving, evocative captions he creates to suit each photo. In his new book Some Women, he collects 200 of the pieces, which originally appeared in his weekly column inThe Wire, a New Hampshire newspaper. Check out this article about the book in The Wire.

We also came across a Deutsche Welle article on Ole, Asger, and the Photoautomat folks, bringing the photobooth back to European cities. 

We were happy to hear from Dick Jewell recently, belatedly now featured in our Artists section. His “Five time-based photobooth portraits on DVD” from 2007 can be seen in our Projects section. His Found Photos has been listed in our In Print section for some time, now with an updated URL. If anyone has a copy of this extremely rare and influential book lying about, feel free to send it our way…

Thanks to Paula Birch, the woman behind The Strip of a Lifetime project, for letting us know about her pride and joy, a restored and customized black and white photobooth now located at the Cambridge Hotel in Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia.

We’ve also added A Day at the Races, a a new collaborative work by Ginny Lloyd, to our In Print section. The book is available for purchase in hard copy and PDF download.

With the help of Tim in St. Louis and Anthony in Chicago, I got my photobooth up and running in time for our big birthday party. It was a huge hit at the party, and we have a guestbook full of photos and messages from happy party-goers. Having a photograph taken with my daughter wearing a “1” hat on her first birthday made all of the time and effort worthwhile. 

This week, I switched out the roof that the booth arrived with for the more stylish curved roof, still authentic to the Model 14 but not original to this particular booth. 

This weekend, I painted part of the main wall with magnetic paint and gave it a frame to create a board where we can put up all of our photostrips. 

And now I’ve finally got an appropriate home for a gift Tim gave me awhile back, an original photobooth display glass, nicely framed.

Finally, this week I learned from Raul at Foto-Mat that my photobooth wasn’t as new to me as I thought. In fact, almost six years ago, in August of 2005, I sat in this very booth and took a strip of photos when it was located at Big Fun in Cleveland, Ohio. It’s come full circle, this machine.

As we were finishing up construction of the photobooth shed, I had been preparing the pathway — uneven, half dirt, half concrete, and potentially treacherous — for the move-in. When the day finally arrived yesterday for the booth to be delivered, I started the day by heading out to rent the necessary tools: a set of “Roll-or-Kari” piano moving dollies and a J‑Bar, a.k.a. Dutchman Dolly (a.k.a. Johnson Bar or J‑Bar).

I was given a time slot of 8 a.m. to noon for delivery; naturally, the truck showed up at 1:30 p.m. The driver was able to back it up into the driveway, and so began the somewhat frightening process of getting a 900 lb. booth and pallet off the truck using the lift gate. 

After work last night, my friends Keith and Eric came over to lend a hand, and we got to work disassembling the high-quality pallet the booth came on, getting the booth off the pallet, and getting it onto the Roll-or-Karis. From there, it was a pretty straight shot through the gate and down the path into the shed.

Getting the 30-inch wide booth through the 32-inch doorway was tight, but I don’t think we hit anything, and no one lost any fingers, so it was a success. I was surprised, actually, how smoothly it went; we were done just an hour and 15 minutes after we started. We pushed and pulled the booth into the corner of the space, and stood back to admire our work.

Last night and this morning, I worked with Tim over FaceTime to get the transmission aligned (which involved my first problem, first diagnosis, and first bonehead mistake, none of which will be the last), and I’m hoping to get to picture-taking tonight.

Today, I cleaned off all of the old (and conflicting) price stickers, as well as lots of layers of tape, stickers of hearts and cats (where has this booth been?), and some other gunk.

I also moved the sweet late-’60s sign from the right side of the booth against the wall to the left side, where it can be seen in all its glory.

More updates to follow as I make more progress.

It’s always been a bit of an embarrassment that a guy running a website about photobooths doesn’t actually have one of his own. Tim’s got more than a few himself, and after finally buying a house a few years back, it was high time I got my own. When we had our first child last year, the idea sounded even better, and I’ve been working to make it happen. We’re very, very close.

The saga began in April, 2009, just after the end of the last photobooth convention. Our buddy Anthony had a line on a Model 14 photobooth that had lived at the Texas State Fair for many years, and was up for sale. He suggested I buy it and we would fix it up and ship it out. Since then, that booth actually got switched out for a different booth, I suddenly had no time to go on photobooth-fixing jaunts, and Anthony had more than a lot on his plate as well. This month, he finished refurbishing it on the inside, replacing parts big and small and making sure everything worked. Now, more than two years later, the booth is on a truck, on its way from Chicago to Los Angeles.

The second part of the story is the work that I’ve been doing on my end to make our house ready for the booth. It’s not a big place, and having run out of room inside, we decided the best place for the booth would be in its own little space out in the backyard. Next to our shed, we’ve got a strange little space protected by an overhang, which my friend Jeff and I have, over the course of the last two months, transformed into a tiny, photobooth-sized room. We framed the walls, put in a door, added siding, did the electrical, and hung drywall. I’m about to prime and paint, with not much time to spare: the booth is due here in three days. 

The space began like this:

And eventually became this:

And looks like this on the outside (though it will be painted at some point):

Once the space is ready, the next challenge is making sure that the booth can get from the driveway to its new home. A balky gate, an uneven pathway, and a huge lip at the base of the door are all obstacles in the way of a successful move, so I’m trying to make sure we’ve got the right tools (“Roll-Or-Kari” and “Dutchman’s Dolly,” anyone?) and strength in numbers to carry it off. And if that wasn’t enough, my daughter’s first birthday party is next weekend, and if the booth isn’t ready by then, well, I don’t want to think about that. I’ve got my fingers crossed.

Sad news first: thanks to some updates this month, we’ve learned that photochemical booths no longer exist at Corner Mall in Downtown Crossing in Boston and at Wasteland in the Haight in San Francisco.

In other news, Karl Lagerfeld presented a collection of photobooth photos of various celebrities to coincide with the American Foundation for AIDS Research gala, as reported by Harper’s Bazaar and Chanel News.

Check out the selection of photos of celebrities, models, and Lagerfeld himself, as well as Zhang Ziyi, seen here.

And…in other Karl Lagerfeld photobooth news, he seems to have shot a new campaign for Chanel in a photobooth, though we haven’t come across the resulting photos yet.

Thanks to Marco and Ferdinand for letting us know about a recent European public television feature on photobooths. The Metropolis segment on the Arté channel features Photobooth author Raynal Pellicer and our friend and long-time contributor Marco Ferrari. The interview, in German, is on YouTube.

And finally, a long-awaited chapter in my photobooth story will begin soon. This week, my Model 14 photobooth will be making its way from Chicago to Los Angeles, where I’ll be setting it up in a shed a friend and I have been putting together in my back yard. I’ll be providing updates on the setup of the booth as we go along. The race to get the machine in place and working before my daughter’s first birthday party is on!

It’s been a few weeks since we’ve posted about what’s new on the site, so here it is, a little bit of everything. First, a new booth location, The Long Room in Chicago, a booth we’ve long heard of but hadn’t had an official submission yet. Thanks, Chris.

Next up, a terrific late ’60s German photobooth on film:

Thanks to Les Matons for a tip about a classic Fotofix booth in Anthony Mann’s Cold War spy thriller, A Dandy in Aspic.

The fascinating documentary Marwencol features a brief, passing glimpse of a World War Two-era photobooth photo.

We also caught the photostrip appearance in Joe Wright’s latest film Hanna, after receiving tips from Joe and Raul about it. Once the film is out on DVD, we’ll add it to the site.

For photobooth fans in Florida, Fotomaton.org’s “Selections 1.1” exhibition is still on display at Karma Cream in Gainesville. We mentioned it back in February and hope some of our readers have had a chance to visit. If not, you’ve still got time, as the show will run at least into June. Again, the show features works by Meags Fitzgerald (Canada), Jena Ardell (U.S.), Verdi Yahooda (U.K.), and Odile Marchoul (Belgium). Thanks to Aran for the update.

Photobooth photos made the news recently, as the priciest example of photobooth art was sold this month: an Andy Warhol work titled “Self-Portrait.” Brett Gorvy of Christie’s provided some background on the piece in an article titled The Birth of Cool: Andy Warhol, Self-Portrait, 1963–1964.

Andy Warhol’s four-paneled Self-Portrait, 1963–1964, is acclaimed in every Warhol monograph and exhibition catalogue as his first seminal self-portrait. It ranks not only as one of the most iconic and enigmatic portrayals of an artist’s own image, but its multi-panel format and use of mechanically-produced photographic imagery are also acknowledged as the most radical advancements in portraiture since Cubism.

The piece, as was reported in the Wall Street Journal, Vending Times and elsewhere, went for $38.4 million, and, as the Journal noted, a “similar self-portrait comprising a single image from this photo-booth series in red sold for $6.8 million, just over its $6 million low estimate.” All in all, not a bad day for the humble 25¢ photobooth.

Also, thanks to Tim for pointing out my appearance on “Jeopardy!” last month. It was a lot of fun, and though I didn’t have the chance to name drop Photobooth.net, I did get asked by Alex about my proposal to my wife in the photobooth at the Musee Mecanique .

As you may have noticed, we recently battled our way through another security failure that brought our site to a halt for a few days. We thank you for your patience and for bearing with us as we worked to get everything back in order. As always, please let us know about any photobooth news, location updates, or other stuff you think we’d be interested in. 

Game shows for 800, please.

Answer: this person provides possibly the first and only link between Alex Trebek and the mysterious world of photobooths.

If you said “Who is Photobooth.net’s very own Brian Meacham?” then you’ve just pocketed a quick 800 clams…

It’s true: Brian will be appearing as a contestant on today’s episode of “Jeopardy!” Tune in to see how he fares and whether he manages to slip a photobooth mention into the show.

Good luck, Brian.

UPDATE: Brian had an amazing 5‑game run and did us proud. Congratulations, Brian!