Nothing like starting off the year with some bad news: we’ve been sitting on this story for awhile now, but thanks to a flood of information from readers, it’s time to report on some sad disappearances. Photochemical photobooths all over California have been disappearing left and right, it seems. Booths in venerable locations, where they’ve been for years, have recently been sold or replaced by digital booths, much to the chagrin of local photobooth enthusiasts.

Starting up in the Bay Area, the outdoor booth at the Bancroft Clothing Company in Berkeley has disappeared. Thanks to Holly for letting us know in December of 2009. Victoria wrote in with some more details this week:

I was then made aware that they had plans to have their photobooth hauled away that week! This was terrible news as this was the last chem-photo booth in the east bay. Now I have to got to San Francisco to do any photoboothing. Not to mention this was a color booth making it even more of a loss. The manager I talked to told me that it would get vandalized and just didn’t make much money which was why they were getting rid of it. 

Second, in Santa Cruz, the four photobooths at the Casino Arcade are now gone. They began disappearing in early 2009; thanks to Dennis and to Victoria for the updates.

Next, the beautiful Model 11 photobooth (and its slightly less beautiful in comparison companion) at the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego. Barbara let us know about their disappearance in June of 2009; my call to the gift shop there didn’t yield any clues as to where they’d moved to, but they were replaced by a digital booth, which seems like a bit of an insult considering the location.

Closer to home here at Photobooth.net West, we’ve lost two photochemical booths in Hollywood, the last two to survive in recent years. First, the booth at Lucky Strike Lanes. Thanks again to Dennis for tipping us off to that change; I’d visited it not two weeks before it left, and it seemed like it was in fine shape, turning out great-looking strips. Sad indeed. Just down the street, Tiny’s K.O., home to the great-looking photobooth that sat outside in their entry way, closed down, and the booth was put up for sale. The booth rarely worked, and we never got a chance to put it to use.

Thanks to Dennis, Holly, Barbara, Alison, Ricky, Victoria, Steve, and everyone else who wrote in to let us know about these booths. 

I don’t know exactly when Blackpool got its photomaton, but this photo dates to the days when it was still “New.” The girl in the photo is wearing a pin in the shape of the Blackpool Tower on her coat, and has a somewhat mysterious half-smile on her face. At least I think it’s a girl; the hair, for that era, seems long for a boy’s, and the scarf under the coat…but who knows.

We say goodbye this week to a few Utah photobooth locations: two different contributors emailed this week letting us know that the veritable bonanza of Utah Kmarts with photochemical photobooths was too good to last. Booths at the Kmarts in Salt Lake City, West Jordan, and Draper are now gone. Thanks to Kylie and Steph for the updates.

We also say goodbye to our old hosting provider this week, and hello to a new one. Hopefully, our readers won’t see anything but a more responsive and reliable site; on our end, things are already miles better. 

One more new addition: the appetite for poorly-faked photostrips on TV seems unsated, and this week we bring you a pseudo-strip from an October, 2009 episode of Desperate Housewives (who knew that show was still on?).

Our friend Marco in Italy has been sending us news and info from Italy over the past few years, and we’ve finally had time to track down three films he let us know about. Two are 1980s Italian films with extensive photobooth sequences, and one is a Kevin Costner film with a fake photostrip in it, but we’re happy to have them all. Thanks, Marco.

First, Cosi parlo Bellavista, in which a Naples man is directed in how to pose for his photobooth photos.

Second, Al bar dello sport, in which a winning lottery ticket goes missing but is spotted in a photobooth.

And finally, Message in a Bottle, where we see a photostrip of Kevin Costner amongst the detritus of his life.

We are always grateful to our readers who submit their finds to us; please drop us a line if you come across something we don’t have listed on the site.

We’ve been sitting on quite a few new photobooth items recently, just looking for a moment to post them. Now, with a little time this holiday weekend, we’re posting a few at a time. First, a brief faked photostrip in an episode of the original UK Life on Mars, in which Chris shows Sam some photos of him with his girlfriend, at the end of a tension-filled episode.



Next, we see an extended photobooth sequence from a 1951 flashback in an episode of Cold Case which originally aired last October. Thanks to Marco for letting us know about this one.

Another tip, this one from Klaas, led us to an episode from the first season of Burn Notice, from July, 2007. We’ve never seen someone slap another person in the face with a photostrip to jog their memory, but I guess it works…

Finally, we have (at least) the third appearance of a photostrip in the long history of The Simpsons, this one the first in high definition in the show’s 20th season (the other two are here and here). In this episode, both Marge and Homer and Moe and his girlfriend Maya take photostrips in the arcade photobooth, with varying results.

Contributor Meags Fitzgerald sent us a writeup on an exhibition of the Centre Pompidou in Paris with some interest to the photobooth community.

The Centre Pompidou in Paris currently has an exhibition titled “La Subversion Des Images” or “The Subversion of Images”. It is an exhibition of Surrealist photographs and films. The Surrealists were particularly interested in working with the automatic and the spontaneous, so naturally they used the newly invented Photomaton in their artwork. The 1929 issues of “Variétés” and “La Revolution Surréaliste” (Surrealist publications) featured several photobooth pictures of members of the Surrealist movement, the exhibition features dozens of these original photobooth strips. It also has Rene Magritte’s famous “Je ne vois pas (la femme) cachée dans la fôret”, which features 16 photobooth pictures of the most well known Surrealists. The “Subversion of Images” includes strips taken by Andre Breton, Salivador Dali and many others. It is extremely well curated and is worth a visit if you are in the area. The exhibit opened September 23 and runs until January 11, 2010.

No photographs were allowed in the exhibition, this is a photo of one of the exhibit’s publications.

Thanks, Meags!

A few weeks ago, Tim and I were, by chance, both in New York City at the same time and were lucky enough to enjoy a look around the Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition of new photography acquisitions with Leslie Ureña and Lee Ann Daffner of the museum’s photography department.

As we walked through the galleries, we headed directly for the reason we were there: a case containing forty-four Photomatic photographs of a woman, taken over a relatively brief span of time.



The photographs are remarkably unvaried: no one else, save a tiny sliver of a child’s arm and head in one photo, ever shares the frame with the woman. The frames are both metal and paper, with a few varieties of each type represented, and the photos are, for the most part, in good shape.



I’m curious to see if any of the photos feature interesting markings on the back, but that will have to wait until the exhibition is taken down. The photos are great to see up close, and the rest of the show, including a terrific batch of photos by Richard Avedon, is open through March, 2010, and is well worth seeing.

We’re grateful to Leslie, Lee Ann, and Sarah Meister, as well, for setting up our little meeting. We’re always encouraged when we see photobooth photos in a museum setting, and to see their significance and their narrative power taken seriously in the grand scheme of the history of photography.

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.

Thanks to Rafael for these photos from the “J’adore aglisia” project we mentioned last week. Looks like fun…

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