Over the past week or so, we’ve made made additions to nearly every section of the site. The contributions keep rolling in (thanks, dear readers) and we’ve also had a moment or two to delve into the vastness that is the “Photobooth.net To-Do” folder, shrinking it ever so slightly. Here’s a tally of what’s new:
Photobooth locations: Barbary, Philadelphia, PA Highline, Seattle, WA
Album covers: Stinky Toys, by the French punk band Stinky Toys.
TV Shows: “Quints by Surprise,” in which the family squeeze into a photobooth at an Amy’s Ice Cream location in Austin, Texas.
TV Commercials: A JCPenney spot partially set in a photobooth. A series of three commercials for French social security, all set in a photobooth: Rene, Paul, and Philippe et Isabelle.
Burt provides a brief history of the booth as well as a look at the current state of the photochemical machine, attempting to survive in a digital world:
However, enthusiasts argue, digital booths just don’t have the same appeal. Tim Garrett, who, with his friend Brian Meacham, co-founded the appreciation site Photobooth.net in the US, believes that “Digital ‘enhancing’ of the experience with cheesy voiceovers and graphics has taken away from the beautiful simplicity of the vintage booths.” The charm of the old-school booths, he continues, is “a special sauce of ingredients: the tiny precious images, beautifully lit and exposed; the instant gratification; the cramped space of the seating area that inspires intimate photos; the anticipation as you wait for the strip to pop out, unsure exactly how they will look; the pungent smell of the chemicals and the low whirr of the machine…”
For our readers in Italy and around Europe, we’d like to make note of an upcoming exhibition of photobooth photos in Viterbo, Italy (about 90km north of Rome) at the Studio Fontaine. The exhibition is called “4x20 Lasciare Asciugare” (which translates to “Let it dry”).
Gianmaria Ponzi, one of the co-founders of the gallery, got in touch to let me know about the show. His description follows:
Sabina Scapin and I have founded a gallery of contemporary art in viterbo. Sabina is a photographer and I am, above all, a collector of vintage photos, the blurry and unusual, and a researcher of photos. We like the photographic portrait and have thought that the true portraits of the common people are more interesting and authentic. We have thought about picking up photos from photobooths, but we have found problems in Italy, because they cannot be found in the markets. We have made announcements in newspapers but without any answer.
We’ve bought them on eBay, and gone to Brussels and Berlin where there are photo markets. We succeeded in borrowing some photos on loan from our friends who had preserved them.
The show that opens October 30, 2010 will display around 100 photobooth photos taken over the last 50 to 90 years, and are almost all in black and white.
Please let us know if you attend the show, and send photos so we can let everyone know what it was like. Thanks to Gianmaria for getting in touch with us.
Brian and I were honored to participate as judges in the Best Narrative category for the Art of Waiting photobooth contest. There were quite a few entries we liked, but one stood out as the clear winner: Kate Tyler’s piece entitled “Alot can happen in 3 minutes…,” a portion of which is pictured at right. Kate’s playful exploration of immigration and assimilation tells an interesting story and makes great use of photostrips. Kate’s piece also took top honors in the “Most Out of the Box” category. Congratulations, Kate!
If you’re a Photobooth.net reader, then perhaps you dream about owning your own vintage photobooth some day. Since this might not be the easiest dream to fulfill, we’re pleased to announce the arrival of the world’s smallest — and least expensive — photobooth: Pocketbooth, a vintage photobooth simulator for your iPhone or iPod touch.
Now, you may ask why we’re mentioning a digital photobooth app on our site. While we don’t typically post about digital photobooths, this app is special for two reasons: 1) we had a hand in designing it and 2) all of the elements in the app are based on actual design elements of vintage photobooths.
While the overall look of Pocketbooth was inspired by the Model 11, much of the woodgrain textures and the delivery chute are from a Model 17 booth. Great care was taken to ensure that the booth is true to the look and feel of its analog counterpart. From the woodgrain-surrounded delivery chute to the red and green lights behind the reflective glass, right down to the size, proportions, and texture of the resulting photostrip, it feels like the real deal.
The app is available on the iTunes store and is currently discounted to 99 cents. It will be returning to its normal price in early October.
If you don’t have an iPhone or iPod Touch, or feel it somehow unfaithful to use this app, please continue to use our Photobooth Locator and find an actual photobooth near you.
Our friend Scot Phillips, whom we met at last year’s Photobooth Convention in Chicago, let us know about a unique event at the museum where he works: an art auction whose proceeds will go towards helping the museum purchase a photochemical photobooth.
The Massillon Museum is seeking help in the form of donated artwork to be auctioned to help raise funds to purchase their photobooth.
The Massillon Museum will host its one-night only Photobooth Project: Silent Art Auction on September 25th from 7:00pm to 10:00pm in the Main Gallery at the Massillon Museum. All proceeds from this event will benefit the Photobooth Project.
Each donor will be recognized in the event program. Upon purchase of the photobooth, your name will also be included on a plaque installed on the photobooth.
If you want to donate your original artwork, download an application from the website (www.massillonmuseum.org and click on the Support tab) or contact Scot Phillips at bsphillips@massillonmuseum.org. Donations outside the fundraisers will be greatly appreciated. If making a donation, just specify that you want it to go to the “Photobooth Project” fund.
The deadline to donate artwork is Saturday, September 18th. You may donate artwork from now until the deadline, just contact Sandi to arrange pick up/drop off — don’t hesitate. We greatly appreciate your consideration and hope you will help make the Photobooth Project a success. Hope to see you at the Silent Art Auction!
Happy summer to all of our readers across the country and around the world! To kick off the summer, Jeff from The Art of Waiting has launched a contest centered around photobooths that he has invited us to help out with.
Head over to the contest page to find out more about it, and get going on your entry!
The Art of Waiting’s summer contest hearkens back to a simpler time. A time when waiting for your betty crocker leftovers to reheat in the sears roebuck oven didn’t seem like an eternity. A time when waiting for the television commercial to end was more of a fascination than an annoyance. A time when waiting 3 minutes for a strip of 4 pictures to drop into the slot was the only option. You know what I’m talkin’ ’bout Willis. Old style, wet chemistry, dip ‘n’ dunk photobooths have a special niche in the analogue photo world, and as a staple of summer carnivals, festivals, and fairs for many decades, they seemed to be an appropriate subject for the summer contest.
We’ll be back in September with some outstanding entries and the contest results. Get boothing (and waiting)!
During the 2009 International Photobooth Convention, we screened a short documentary that takes the viewer on a 3‑minute tour inside a photobooth as a photostrip is being developed. If you have ever wondered what is humming and whirring while you wait for your photo, wonder no more: we finally got around to uploading the short to YouTube. The video is in real-time, so you can see what happens at each stage of the development process. The video might have benefited from a musical score of some sort (a la Sesame Street), but opted instead for the natural sounds of the booth’s inner-dialogue.
The exhibition begins with a group of Warhol’s photobooth strip portraits. These strips of images shot form an ordinary photobooth highlight the flux in personality of the artist’s subjects. Unlike a single-frame portrait, the photobooth strips capture change in movement and facial expressions throughout a series of connected images, revealing the sitter’s personality and creating a story of shifting moods or actions. For instance, in Edie Sedgwick (1965), the Factory superstar who Andy Warhol once said “could be anything you wanted her to be” strikes a series of coyly crafted poses that convey multiple moods, if not multiple identities. The photobooth strips on view in love fear pleasure lust pain glamour death include portraits of celebrities such as Ethel Scull and Gerard Malanga, as well as self-portraits by Warhol in which the artist explores his own personality shifts through a storyline of snapshots.
In addition to these works by Warhol, the museum has installed a photochemical booth for visitors to enjoy. Museumgoers are encouraged to take a strip of photos, cut off one photo, and leave it on the museum wall.
A Facebook page features photos of the wall of visitors’ photobooth pictures.
We’ve recently come across an issue of Time magazine from January 1965, featuring a cover by Andy Warhol, using photostrips of teenagers to illustrate a story on the subject in the issue. From Publisher Bernhard M. Auer’s letter:
The cover illustration was done by Pop Artist Andy Warhol, who has made his name and fame by getting his literal renditions of Campbell Soup cans into leading art galleries. Warhol, 33, worked in a five-and-ten as a kid in McKeesport, Pa. For this week’s cover, he took seven youngsters–aged 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 and 19, and all relatives of TIME staffers–to a Broadway arcade, where they posed for pictures in one of these old five-and-ten type camera booths. These pictures were Warhol’s starting point for the cover illustration. We asked him to use the same techniques for the accompanying “self-portrait.”
Sir: Andy Warhol’s cover illustration portrays the antics of monkeys in a sideshow. One might infer that today’s teenagers make a joke of the responsibility inherent in their premature sophistication.
D. R. HUNNEMANIII, New Haven, Conn.
Sir: Your Andy Warhol cover is evocative and refreshing. The squares, unfortunately, won’t pay attention to how he’s manipulated his patterns, and thus will miss the rhythm and wit.
Photobooth locations:
For our readers in Italy and around Europe, we’d like to make note of an upcoming exhibition of photobooth photos in Viterbo, Italy (about 90km north of Rome) at the Studio Fontaine. The exhibition is called “4x20 Lasciare Asciugare” (which translates to “Let it dry”).
Brian and I were honored to participate as judges in the Best Narrative category for the 
