As we catch up on what’s been going on while we were out of town, we bring you some bits and pieces from our readers: five new international additions to the site, courtesy of five different folks who got in touch with us.

First, check out Alberto Tanquero’s nice found photobooth image cards over at The Found in Chicago (thanks, Alberto).

We’ve added our first German show, Alles was Zählt, to our listings, with one of many episodes featuring the romance between Deniz and Roman and a few photobooth frames. (thanks, Ricky).

We’ve also added some new photobooth projects, including Paula Birch’s site, “The Strip of a Lifetime”, with tons of photos from Australian photobooths (thanks, Paula).

Also, a lingerie photo shoot in a photochemical photobooth in Italy, courtesy of the Belgian designer La fille d’O (thanks, Marco).

And finally, thanks to the tireless efforts of our Canadian correspondent Meags Fitzgerald, we have four new photobooths listed in the Maritimes, three in Nova Scotia and one in New Brunswick, bringing our total to seven represented provinces (Yukon, I’m looking at you…):

Halifax Shopping Centre

Park Lane Mall

Scotia Square

Champlain Place

Thanks, Meags.

We’d like to thank everyone who contributed, and we encourage others to speak up, drop us a line, and help continue the growth of the site as a photobooth resource for all to enjoy. 

My wife and I took our seven month-old daughter on a trip to Europe this month, and like all of our vacations in recent years, it involved a few photobooth-related stops. I’d been corresponding over the years with Igor from La Joyeuse de Photographie, the group behind a number of photobooths in Paris, and I looked forward to visiting the booths he’d set up and hopefully meeting him. Unfortunately, our schedules didn’t mesh very well, I was only in town for a few days, and I wasn’t much of a night owl this time around. I figured that at least we’d visit the photobooth at the Bonton, so we could check out some kids’ clothes while we took our photos. 

We arrived at midday, looked around at the very nice clothes for a bit, and then popped into the booth for some photos. We took two strips, and were very impressed with the quality of the images. The strips from that machine look really outstanding. My daughter still hasn’t gotten the knack of smiling in the photobooth yet, and is a little freaked out by the cramped space and bright flash, but she’ll get there.

As we made our way to the door to leave, I saw someone I recognized coming in: it was Igor! Having seen countless photobooth photos of him, I knew what he looked like, so I called out his name and introduced myself, and we had a chat for a few minutes. I couldn’t believe my luck; if we hadn’t gotten lost, if we hadn’t decided to walk instead of take the Metro, if we hadn’t taken that second strip of photos, we never would have run into him. He and I hopped in the booth to commemorate the moment, and then went our separate ways. It was great to meet and catch up, even for a moment, and I hope our paths will cross again. Thanks for the photos, Igor!

Later that night I was out with friends in Montmartre on the way to dinner and spotted this elaborate window display in a bookstore, Librarie des Abbesses, advertising Raynal Pellicer’s Photomaton.

After Paris, we traveled to Amsterdam for a few days, and though I don’t know of any photochemical booths there, I did manage to hop inside a beautiful Model 11 that should be familiar to our readers (and anyone out there using Pocketbooth). A few years ago, we heard from Peter and Ina, two arcade game collectors from outside Amsterdam, who wrote to tell us about their beautiful Model 11 photobooth, which we wrote about here.

I got in touch before we arrived in Amsterdam and Peter was kind enough to come into town to pick me up so I could visit with him and his wife and their friends, as well as see their beautiful machine. I wasn’t prepared for the fact that the photobooth was just one of more than 50 machines in their house; while I’m primarily interested in photobooths and am a novice when it comes to vintage arcade games and amusements, I really admired the amazing collection Peter and Ina have assembled. The mechanical complexity of some of these machines blows away the photobooth; talk about crazy innards, wow! The care with which they’ve arranged them, and decorated the walls around them, is quite amazing, as is simply seeing and hearing all of these machines blinking and humming away, completely filling the first floor of a house! Incredible.

Peter’s mechanical genius buddy Coos, who was also there that night, has rigged up Peter and Ina’s Model 11 as a digital photobooth, closely mimicking the output of a photochemical machine, and without permanently altering any of the machine’s photochemical parts. Most of the elements, the tanks and transmission and so on, are still inside, and anything that was removed, such as the camera, was kept and can be replaced. The digital innards consist of a digital camera, a small laptop, a dye-sub printer, and a custom-built trimmer that cuts a strip off of each side of the photobooth photos before sending the trimmed strip, now almost exactly the same size as a traditional strip of photos, into the drying slot. The machine turns out really nice photos, and Peter and Ina were kind enough to sit with me for a few with each of them.

In between taking photos and admiring the outside of the booth, I played some games of basketball, hockey, and bowling, tried to shoot some game and land a jet, watched some Scopitones and Soundies, and generally looked in awe at the amazing collection Peter and Ina have assembled. 

It was a memorable evening, and I thank Peter, Ina, and Coos for their kindness and for taking the time to show me the wonderful collection.

After our visit to Amsterdam, we had a morning left in Paris before returning to L.A., and we decided to visit Le 104, both to see its photobooth and to see the giant carousel we’d read about. Unfortunately, the carousel wasn’t operating that day, but we found the photobooth in fine working order, and took a few strips of photos. 

Next time, I’ll have to put Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Italy on the photobooth itinerary, but for now, I was happy to meet some email acquaintances in person, and pleased to see that photobooths are alive and well in one way or another in Paris and Amsterdam.

We were first introduced to Raynal Pellicer when we were contacted for input for an upcoming book about the photobooth. We provided answers to a few questions, and Tim offered some of his artwork, and, as often happens with these long-term projects, we sort of forgot about it for awhile. Eventually, late last year, we began hearing a growing buzz about an upcoming work in both French and English, with its own oft-updated Tumblr full of photobooth images. 

In January of 2011, Photomaton was published. Raynal was kind enough to have the publishers send us each a copy of the book in French, and we were excited to see not only our names and words (and in Tim’s case, his work) included, but more importantly, to see what a fine collection of photobooth history and art Raynal has put together. I haven’t yet gotten ahold of the English edition of the book, but based on the illustrations alone, the book is a real gem. Photobooth photos of all kinds, with unique backgrounds, inscriptions, and Photomatic frames; photobooth photos of artists, photographers, musicians, politicians; and photobooth-related promotional material and advertisements are all included in the book. Artists whose work we were already familiar with (Warhol, Vaccari, Costa, Rideal) is featured, as are works by artists we hadn’t yet come across, including Jose Mesa, Julie Brown Smith, and Giuseppe Colovati.

For both the photobooth enthusiast and anyone interested in the history of photography and art in general, we heartily recommend picking up a copy of this book; it’s a beautifully assembled volume, full of fascinating photos and history. 

We’re bringing to a close the series of updates to our Movies and TV listings sourced from IMDb’s keyword system with some mixed results: of the six items remaining on the list, only three seem to yield solid results. If anyone can find the photobooth in A Chipmunk Christmas (1981), Leave it to Beaver (1997), or Wild Tigers I Have Known (2006)—and three more different pieces of work I can’t say I have known—we’d appreciate it. We scanned through each film at least twice and came up with nothing.

On the other hand, we had good, diverse results from three other titles listed: Road Movie, Be With Me, and Aliens Inside.

The late Joseph Strick’s Road Movie features a brief photobooth moment, in which a prostitute picked up a pair of truckers shows off some photos she took in the booth, and then relays a rather depressing story about what happened to her once when she was in a photobooth.

The film Be With Me tells three different fictional stories, one of which involves two girls who get to know each other online. When they meet in person, they go into a purikura photobooth and take some photos.

And finally, Aliens Inside, an Italian TV series. I can’t tell if the video I’ve found online, which is about 30 seconds long and mostly credits, is the full show, but it’s all I was able to find. A man dressed as an alien takes pictures in a photobooth; I wish I knew what was going on here.

So, thanks to these new tips, we’ve added ten new films and five new television shows to our tally. Now it’s time to return the favor and add the hundreds of shows and movies we have listed here into IMDb’s keyword system. I’ll get right on it…

We’ve got a little update to our film listings today in honor of yesterday’s Academy Awards, a short film from France nominated this year in the Animated Short Film category called Madagascar, carnet de voyage. The closing credits of the film feature a number of the production team behind the film in photobooth photos. While the film didn’t win last night, it’s a terrific short and we recommend you seek it out.

We continue to update our movie and television listings with more titles found through the magic of IMDb’s keyword system, and start with a film I’d never heard of, Now & Forever.

Angela (Mia Kirshner) and John (Adam Beach) visit a photobooth in—what else?—a roadside rest stop, where she takes a sad strip of photos in what looks more like a Polaroid booth. He turns around to find her gone, and we see her jumping into a semi truck, taking off with no warning. The photostrip falls to the ground, where he finds it and then, very dramatically, screams to the heavens and drops the strip, which flutters to the ground. Acting!

The IMDb list featured another film I thought we’d already added here: My Sister’s Keeper. This story of a family dealing with leukemia features a brief moment of happiness when the family visits a photobooth on the pier.

And finally, another remarkable find: Wim Wenders’ Summer in the CIty. Wenders is perhaps the king of the photobooth on film; we’ve listed photobooth moments in his Alice in the Cities, Paris, Texas, and Faraway, So Close!. We’re happy to add Summer in the City, his first full-length film, to that list.

Wenders has always been interested in automatic machines in his films, and includes many in this film: cigarette machines, pinball machines, even a visit to an “Automatischer Lebensmittel Markt,” an Automat. The first time I scanned through the film, I didn’t see anything that looked like a photobooth. On second glance, though, I spotted it, a nearly invisible shot in near complete darkness, in this extremely poor transfer. Hanns (Hanns Zischler) takes a strip of photos in the booth, located outside, in the rain. Where does he go when he leaves the photobooth? Into a phone booth, of course.

We continue our survey of movies and TV shows new to us thanks to an IMDb keyword search with a television show that sets a new standard: the earliest appearance by a photobooth in a TV show that we have yet found. Expanding the history of photobooths in TV to a run of more than 50 years, this 1959 episode of “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” utilizes a somewhat aytpical single-shot photobooth. The machine, which produces Photomatic-style photos though without a frame, is located in a bar where David Logan (Clint Kimbrough) meets a sailor, played by the great Clu Gulager, in the episode “Appointment at Eleven.” The use of the booth doesn’t do much in the way of advancing the plot, but we’re excited to have found a link, however tenuous, between the great Hitch and the photobooth.

Next, switching gears more than a little, we’ve got what seems like a haunted or possessed photobooth at a roadside rest stop in the 2003 thriller Octane, starring Madeleine Stowe and Mischa Barton. The movie is pretty forgettable, but does feature a nice little moment when the flash goes off in an empty photobooth, freaking out an already freaked out mom (Stowe) looking for her rebellious daughter (Barton), who’s cast her lot in with some bad, bad folks.

Jumping across the pond to another roadside rest stop, two young protagonists of  Late Night Shopping hop into a photobooth for a combination fight/makeout session, and look lovingly at the resulting photostrip afterwards. For a fake strip, the result isn’t the worst we’ve seen.

And finally, a photobooth scene in a movie we’d heard about but not done anything about, the 2010 re-imagining of The A‑Team. Thanks to Meags for the original tip on this film. Face (Bradley Cooper) pulls Charissa (Jessica Biel) in the world’s roomiest photobooth, where they slap and punch and gouge each other’s eyes out, followed by flirting and handcuffs. The size and scale of the booth is way off, and the sort of widescreen video screen showing each image as the flash goes off is equally strange. Then again, the whole movie is a pretty lame attempt to recapture the good-natured fun of the original series, so it’s par for the course.

More movies and TV shows to come…

We’re taking a break from the movie and TV updates to report on an upcoming photobooth art show happening in Gainesville, Florida. The show, hosted by Fotomaton.org, is called “Selections 1.1,” and follows on the heels of their “Selections 1” show in December, 2010, which we posted a brief note about after the fact.

The show opens March 7th and will be open for about a month, and features the work of Meags Fitzgerald, Verdi Yahooda, Odile Marchoul, and Jena Ardell.

Artists who are interested in submitting works for future exhibitions can find out more by emailing Aran Graham at aran@fotomaton.org.

We’ll begin this second batch of updates thanks to IMDb keyword system with a great photobooth sequence from an ’80s horror omnibus film, Creepshow 2. If you’d told me I’d see—spoiler alert—George Kennedy and Dorothy Lamour gunned down in a roadside tourist shop in front of a Model 14 photobooth, well, I wouldn’t have believed you. But it happened, and Creepshow 2 is your proof. 

Next up, Bille August’s 1983 coming of age film, Zappa. The photobooth appears in a brief sequence in the film’s opening credits. The machine, with its “Fotografer dem selv” sign, looks similar to the machine in the Danish film Mig og mafiaen; is it a coincidence that the only other Danish film in our list also features a bare ass in the photobooth? Ponder that one.

And finally, an episode of the U.K. television show Jam & Jerusalem. The list of films and TV shows that people have taken the time to tag on IMDb seems really odd: Buffalo ’66 is there, as is Beaches, but no Amélie, no Superman III, no The Band Wagon… Same goes for the TV shows: why is Jam & Jerusalem—even for this avid fan of BBC programs, a show I’d never heard of—listed there, while iconic shows like Mission Impossible, Happy Days, and The Simpsons are nowhere to be seen? Anyway, a shop photobooth is the setting for a brief scene featuring Rosie (Dawn French) and her alter ego Margaret.

When I first began seeking out films and TV shows with photobooths in them, the Internet Movie Database was a useful tool, but I quickly exhausted the results I found from searching credits, and synopses (plus the fact that that Colin Farrell movie Phone Booth kept coming up as the first search result). As the site grew, we relied on the movies we saw ourselves, submissions from our readers, and the occasional Google Alert to tip us off to films featuring photobooths and photostrips. This week, I checked in again with IMDb and ran a search using their keyword system, which I don’t think as as robust six years ago, with surprising results.

A keyword search for “photobooth” revealed a list of 33 titles, at least half of which I was completely unaware of. Looking at the 25 unique listings (disregarding the Jay Leno-related items, as is my habit in life as well as with regard to photobooths), 16 were titles I’d never heard about in connection with the photobooth, 8 were titles we already have listed, and one, The A‑Team, was a film I’d known about but hadn’t done anything about yet. 

Over the next few days, I’ll be adding as many of these new films and TV shows as I can get my hands on, which will constitute a major addition to the site, and confirmation of the photobooth’s long and enduring history in the moving pictures.

I’ll begin with Amores Perros, the remarkable debut feature film from director Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu.

This film is the one title in this new batch that I’d actually seen, and I was surprised to see that when I first saw it ten years ago, I hadn’t paid any attention to the role of the photobooth in not one but two separate sequences. It just goes to show that if you’re not looking out for something, it doesn’t make much of an impression. El Chivo (Emilio Echevarría) takes a strip while in his vagrant mode, and another after a shave and a cleanup.

Next, changing modes completely, an episode of Mr. Bean called “Mr. Bean Goes to Town,” in which Mr. Bean (Rowan Atkinson) heads into a photobooth after his camera has been stolen. He listens to the photobooth as the strip makes its way through the machine, and gives it a whack before the strip appears in the slot. 

We’ve cataloged Rowan Atkinson’s sort of one-man photobooth dynasty here on the site. We’ve seen him in Not the Nine O’Clock News (1980), administering a wedding photobooth. Next in line is this episode of his TV show in 1991, followed by the movie Bean (1997). Having conquered television and film, he moved on to animation in Mr. Bean: The Animated Series in 2003. What’s next, Bean?

FInally, a TV series of a different color, Sons of Anarchy. In a brief bit at the beginning of the season one episode called Fun Fair, Gemma (Katey Sagal) and Clay (Ron Perlman) head into the booth for a little fun, but Clay destroys the resulting strip once they’re done.

We’ll have more additions from IMDb’s list of photobooth-tagged films throughout the week. Then it’ll be our turn to contribute, by adding the “photobooth” tag to IMDb’s entries for the hundreds of films and shows we have listed.