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.
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.
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.
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 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.
This week, we heard from Olivia Pintos-Lopez, a photographer and photobooth enthusiast in Australia, about a couple of different projects. First, her photoshoot for Small Magazine hich we mentioned yesterday.
She is also behind a project that just concluded at West Space in Melbourne called Picture Yourself:
Analog photo booths are a quintessential, yet vanishing, part of the mall experience. Closing the curtain of a photo booth creates a private space for self-reflection and self-representation in the transitory areas of commercial spaces. For Picture Yourself, Olivia Pintos-Lopez will use the photo booth on the floor above The West Wing to photograph participants and record a three-minute aural portrait as the images develop. The strip of photos will be exhibited as a singular superimposed image. The sound portraits will be presented as anonymous stories that the viewer can listen in on, disconnected from a particular portrait. The resulting portraits will be exhibited in The West Wing and will be added to over the two weeks as more portraits of mall visitors are collected.
We’ve also archived the show in our Projects section, where you can read more about the show in the artist’s words.
Our friend and prolific contributor Meags Fitzgerald let us know about a photobooth photography show she’s part of called Fotomaton: Selections, which opened this week at the Andy Gato Gallery at Barry University in Miami Shores, Florida.
While the website is a little spare, more information and photos can be found on the show’s Facebook page.
As we were dong some further reading, we discovered that the show actually opened and closed on December 17th; it was a one night event. So, we’re sorry we didn’t have the chance to post about the event earlier, and hope that some of our readers found out about it through other means and were able to enjoy the works on display.
Merry Christmas to all of our readers out there, and thanks for a year filled with fascinating and creative developments on the photobooth front.
Here’s a little greeting courtesy of our friend Klaas in Germany;
Some of our readers may recall the brief mention we made of the wonderful Fotomost Project we took part in with Martin and Ira from Schnellfoto.ru during the 2009 International Photobooth Convention in Chicago (check out photos of the end result in Moscow). Those who participated will certainly remember it, and have probably given up on the hope that they’d ever see the results of their efforts.
In a last-ditch attempt to get the thing done just one year late rather than two years late, I have finished the limited edition numbered set of 100 laserprinted (not photocopied) booklets showcasing the 24 photostrips sent from Moscow and the reply photostrips made in Chicago, along with the story behind the project and some photos of the booths used to make the project happen.
If you’d like a copy for yourself — and these make great stocking-stuffers for the photobooth fan, the photography lover, the Russophile, and anyone interested in a little cross-cultural fun — I’ll be happy to send one your way for $15 bucks to cover the cost of printing, assembly, and postage (slightly higher outside the U.S.). Choose your location and click the button to go to PayPal, or contact me to make other arrangements. |
