Our friend Mixup has sent in this note about the late photobooth artist Jaroslav Supek.

Multimedia artist and writer Jaroslav Supek died after a short illness on 9th July 2009. He was born in 1952 and lived in Odžaci in the Vojvodina region of north Serbia and he took part in many group and solo exhibitions nationally and internationally over four decades. 

He shared the Slovak background of Andy Warhol (Warhol’s parents were from Miková in north-eastern Slovakia) and maybe this had a small part to play in his passion for photobooth machines, something which interested Warhol too. 

I had the good fortune to meet him twice during 2004 when I was working on art projects with Saša Marković and we were staging the 6th International Photobooth Convention in Belgrade. He came along to Belgrade to join in the activities and a few days later we travelled to visit him at his home. We spent an afternoon sharing a drink or two and looking through his many works and catalogues and because of his connection with Slovakia he also owned genuine photobooth strips of Andy Warhol. Maybe not the greatest photobooth artist but certainly the most well known so holding them in my hand was a moment to savor.

Of most importance were pieces relating to the 1997 show “First International Exhibition of Photo-Booth Photography” held at the Srecna gallery, Belgrade, for which he was curator, featuring photobooth work from South, Central and North America and all over Europe. I had a small piece showing and although I had been formulating the idea of a regular convention (still two years away) it spurred me on to achieve this goal.

I feel it can be honestly said that Jaroslav was one of ours.

Supek in the booth at the 2004 International Photobooth Convention in Belgrade

“This is not what I want my relationship to look like.“

Our hats are off to the team behind “The Office” for finally featuring a photobooth on the show, and for doing it right. In last night’s episode, Andy and Erin had a bit of an argument in a photobooth at the bar where the office were enjoying their happy hour. Not only was the photobooth a real Model 21GB (thanks, Anthony), but the strip of photos Andy sadly displayed at the end of the episode was an honest-to-goodness real dip-and-dunk strip from that machine. Well done.

We salute Peter Graves, who died Sunday at 83, one of the first men ever to step into a photobooth on television.

Over the past five years we’ve collected a lot of photobooth-related stuff, much more than we can get to on a regular basis, and the To-Do List tends to pile up. Over the last week or so, we’ve had a chance to get a whole passel of material online, from TV shows and movies to commercials, print ads, music videos, and photobooth locations. In no particular order, here they are. Enjoy!

A commercial for Fruit Gushers in which kids’ massive fruit-shaped heads make their photobooth tip over.

An episode of “How It’s Made” that shows how a digital photobooth is assembled.

The 1989 Lewis Gilbert film Shirley Valentine, with a railway photobooth sequence.

Low Water’s video for “Sister, Leave Me”. Dave sent me the video and a nice note back in 2008; my apologies for not getting to this for far too long.

The 2008 opening titles of “Neighbors,” now with more pseudo-photoboothiness.

The film Onion Underwater, for which we have only a few images from the trailer.

A few glimpses of a photostrip in an episode of Fringe.

An ad for Will Young’s album Let It Go, as sold by Tesco.

Science World’s Photobooth of Doom.

Wickbold Light Bread from Brazil.

The 2001 animated short fim Autofoto.

And finally, two photobooths in the Helsinki Railway Station, thanks to Marco:

The booths (Helsinki Railway Station II and Helsinki Railway Station III) are located in the west entrance of the station. 

One of these may be the first booth I found in Helsinki in 2005, moved to a new location within the station.

We’ll be back with more goodies in the coming months. 

Please keep your contributions coming, as we continue to build our database of all things photobooth.

While photobooths in the U.S. have had their ups and downs of late, it’s becoming apparent that Europe, once overflowing with photochemical booths but then reduced to extinction just a few years ago, is now coming back in a wonderful way.

This week, we’ve made a number of different additions to our various sections, representing a range of recent developments in the European photobooth scene.

First, Igor sent word of a new photobooth at the Bonton in Paris, “a concept-store dedicated to the universe of childhood.” It’s always great to see another photobooth come to life in Paris (our count is now up to four).

Next, we have a trio of items from Germany: first, an article in the Hamburger Abendblatt, listing the Feldstrasse photobooth as one of 100 must-do experiences in the city. “The machine has achieved cult status in Hamburg.”

Next, in the very same Hamburg photobooth, musical duo Liebe Minou shot a video for their song “Mein Zuhause” inside the booth.

And finally, concert venue Uebel & Gefaehrlich features a few different photobooths in a video they’ve released as a podcast. Nina Persson and her band “A Camp,” Pete Doherty from the Libertines, and a guy named Andreas each take some photos in a booth, while a narrator adds some commentary.



From our friends Martin and Ira at Schnellfoto in Moscow, we have a terrific article about photobooths, published in a recent issue of the Russian magazine Foto & Video.

Martin and Ira’s article covers, as far as we can tell, the history of the booth, information about their booth, as well as photobooths in art and a great technical look inside a dip and dunk booth. Thanks so much to Martin for sending us copies of the magazine. 

And finally, we’ve been cleaning out our “To-Do” list lately and finally got around to posting an entry for

our appearance on the BBC web show “Click” a few years ago. We mentioned it here when it first came out in 2007, but now we’ve got screengrabs, crummy as they are, and we’ve immortalized the host’s opinion of Photobooth.net as a “wonderfully pointless site.”

In a brief piece in Sunday’s Real Estate section, Christopher Gray of the New York Times answers a reader question about an penny arcade with Skee ball and pinball located near Times Square in the 1950s.

The spot in question, called Playland, is shown in the article as it appeared in 1952, with three beautiful photobooths lined up in front, in a photograph from the Office for Metropolitan History.

In addition to the three photobooths (and a neighboring “Record Your Voice” booth), the arcade seemed to have no fewer than seven different signs advertising the booths. Those were the days: four photos for a quarter, and a “Giant Malted” for fifteen cents.

Playland 1952 photograph [cropped], Office for Metropolitan History.

We’ve made a bit of a dent in the backlog of material to add to the site, and have a little batch of photobooth sightings to present.

First, we revisit the film Management. We spotted a photostrip in the trailer, and though there’s not much more in the film itself, we’ve updated the entry.

We’ve also added a clever advertisement found on the side of a photobooth in Germany:

Last summer, we got wind of an ABC News webcast featuring a review of the new Arctic Monkeys album, illustrated with photobooth photos of the band:



Described in its Wikipedia article as a “German queer cinema horror film” by a Canadian director, Bruce La Bruce, Otto; or, Up with Dead People features a photostrip (and a photobooth flashback sequence) as a key moment in Otto’s journey.

A few weeks back, James Franco hosted “Saturday Night Live,” and starred in a sketch as a Christmas tree salesman who became overly attached to his trees. As he says goodbye to one, he gives “her” a photostrip of the two of them. No, it doesn’t make much sense.

Finally, we have a 2006 film starring Christina Ricci as a girl born with a pig’s snout, Penelope. Needless to say, she takes a strip of photos in a photobooth:

I didn’t know who Chris Benz was before coming across this piece in the New York Times, which describes some recent changes in the young fashion designer’s life. He recently moved to a new studio space, and left his photochemical photobooth behind:

You recently moved into a new studio space, but you didn’t bring along your famous photo booth.

It was getting to be a bit of an albatross. It broke down. There was only one company in the tristate area that sold them and serviced them, and it closed. So it was just sitting there, all 2,000 pounds of it. We ended up begging this guy in Pennsylvania to take it. At first he didn’t want to, because he said it was worth so much money. We were like, “Just take it!”

New York Magazine characterizes the move this way: “Already he’s moved on from his old studio, ditching a beloved, near-inoperable photo booth in the process…”

You can see some photobooth photos here and a photo of the booth and some photostrips in a New York Times post he guest-blogged in 2008.

Thanks again to Meags, who sent us a massive contribution of booths last year, we’ve got more booths in our directory from Canada and Germany.

The folks at Photoautomat have a large and growing empire across Europe (check out their entire list), and we’re happy to have two more of their Berlin booths listed in our directory. The booths are, like nearly all of the German booths, located outside, at Kottbusser Tor and in front of the Kaiser’s grocery store on Revalerstrasse.

We’re still looking for listings for their photobooths in Dresden and (thanks to Ole for reminding us that we already have the photobooth in Dresden on our list!) Köln, so if anyone has travel plans that will take them to either city soon, please don’t forget your camera and send us some photos and info.

Our Canadian listings have also been expanded, with entries for booths in the Dufferin Mall in Toronto and the Mill Woods Town Centre in Edmonton. Thanks, Meags!

Here’s some happier news to start off the year: while we might have lost a few booths here on the West Coast over the last year, more booths on the East Coast have recently come to our attention.

Virginia now has two black and white photochemical booths in our directory, one at the Rivermill Map Company Bar and Grill in Blacksburg, and another at the New York Deli in Richmond.

Thanks to John in Blacksburg for his photos and info regarding the Rivermill booth, which he describes as “the pride” of his antique camera collection.

Thanks as well to my brother Scott in Richmond for his photos, and to Demetrios for telling us more about his booth, which he owns outright and which is maintained by one of his managers, who has learned to change the chemicals and keep the booth in working order.