Our trickle of new additions to the site continues, with two new locations and news of a photobooth gallery show, for those of you in the Pacific Northwest. First, thanks to Nathan for our long-awaited first-ever photobooth location in Montréal. We’ve long known of Montréal’s great Metro station photobooths, and even taken a few photostrips (and squares) there in the days before Photobooth.net, but we’ve never had an official submission to the site. Here’s hoping the booth at the Rosemont Metro Station is the first of many.

We received word of a new photobooth location in Portland a few months back, so after much delay, we’re happy to list the black and white booth at the House of Vintage, thanks to Victoria. And speaking of Portland, our friend Myles Haselhorst, whom we first met here in L.A. earlier this year sent us news of a photobooth exhibition that just opened at his gallery, Ampersand Vintage:

Out of the Booth : Photobooth Enlargement from the Robert E. Jackson Collection

July 29th to August 23rd, 2009

For a little over a decade, Robert Jackson has been collecting vintage American snapshots, an activity that culminated in a 2007 exhibition at the National Gallery titled “The Art of the American Snapshot 1888–1978.” The photographs exhibited in that show provided a comprehensive record of all the nuances, anomalies, visual tricks & standard subjects that comprise what one thinks of as a typical (& in some cases, not so typical) American snapshot. The same can be said of Jackson’s collection of vintage photobooth images, the single panels & unclipped strips being suggestive of what he considers the photobooth’s ability to meld a sort of unseen photographic technology with one’s personal aesthetic. Collaborating in the curatorial process with Jackson, our August show features enlargements of 32 pieces from his collection that exemplify the uncanny, self-expressive quality inherent in photobooth images. 

More information here.

And finally, a new film has been added to our list, last year’s Choke starring Sam Rockwell and Anjelica Huston.

Sorry, you already missed the opening, but Tim Sullivan’s show (You Feel Me?) is on display at San Francisco’s Steven Wolf Fine Arts through June 20. The show includes at least one photobooth piece, in which the artist reenacts various moments from the 1955 James Dean film Rebel Without a Cause by way of facial expressions. From the press release:

Sullivan starts with a movie performance such as James Dean’s in Rebel Without a Cause, then breaks it down into its sequential emotional moments–anger, happiness, resentment, whatever. He then reenacts those emotions one at a time inside a photo booth until he has captured the entire performance in a series of self-portraits. These end up as long, elegant strips, crisp, analytical grids and thick, monotonous flip books, representing both Sullivan’s performance and the original–the presence and the absence in this work. 

If you happen to visit the show, send us a report.

While it’s 99% tedious photos of ‘tweens mugging for the camera in an Apple Store, our RSS feed for Flickr photos tagged with the word ‘photobooth’ still manages to turn up some interesting pictures every once in awhile. Last week, I spotted what looked like a photobooth photo blown up to cover the side of a building, and in contacting the artist, I was happy to find out more about the project, and others like it that he’s been working on over the years.



Pierre Fraenkel’s work often involves the public presentation of found photos, blown up to varying degrees of massiveness. As he describes his latest project, “Unknown little boy,”

I made a collage of an unknown little boy’s ID photograph. In my collages, I very often like showing people I meet, but above all, I like showing unknown people — either old photographs from a flea market or an antique shop, or an ID photograph found on the ground.

I’m fond of the slightly strained and forced smile of the kid. And then, there’s this hand — whose hand is it? His mother’s? From his clothes and his haircut as well as the quality of the photo, I would say the photograph was taken at the end of the 70s.

The project was done for the 2009 KKO Festival in Altkirch, France, and since we first saw the photo, the boy has now been joined by an unknown girl, as well. We’ve got some more info in our Projects section, and much more can be found on Pierre’s website.

UPDATE: For the Francophones among our readers, a local TV news interview story about the project.

In the run-up to the Photobooth Convention, we had to put a few stories and bits of news on the back burner while we were in Chicago. Now that the dust has settled, it’s time to get those up on the site, and we’re starting with a show that opened more than 1500 miles away from Chicago on the same night as the opening of the Convention: Picture Yourself Here: The Photobooth Show at the Flagstaff Photography Center in Flagstaff, Arizona.



The show, which runs through June 13, is a look at the photostrip collection amassed over the course of the past two years by FPC’s managing director, Jason Hasenbank. Described as “part self-portrait show, part anonymous found object, part candid look at the residents and visitors to downtown Flagstaff,” the show features a collection of “over 2,000 individual images of portraits, body parts, inanimate objects and expressions from our emotional spectrum.” Visitors are encouraged to add their own photos to the collection, and the center offers a scanning and enlarging service to allow people to share the photostrips with family and friends

We’re awaiting a photo of the booth and a sample photostrip to add the Flagstaff Photography Center’s booth to our newly-revamped Photobooth Directory. Thanks to Jason at the FPC for letting us know about the event.

UPDATE: The Flagstaff Photography Center’s booth is now listed in our directory.

So, it’s been a week or so since it ended, and the 2009 International Photobooth Convention is retreating in our collective rear view mirror. Those attendees who made the trek from the U.K., from New York and San Francisco, from Vermont and Massachusetts, from Minnesota and Ohio, and from around the greater Chicago area, have all returned home. The organizers have left Logan Square for far flung Los Angeles, St Louis, and Oak Park, and it’s time to reflect on what went on during the night and long day of the event.

From my perspective, the event was a huge success. Thanks to the hard work of a lot of people, not the least of whom were Anthony, providing his photobooths and preparing the event on the ground in Chicago; Tim, bringing in folks from all over the country and keeping things under control with his unflappable cool; and our hosts at Center Portion Sheila and Greg, we had a smooth and relatively chaos-free event. Without any major issues to worry about, we were able to appreciate the company of the photobooth enthusiasts, technicians, artists, kids, and passersby who attended, all enjoying the shared experience and the luxury of unlimited photobooth pictures.

Some of the highlights for me were first of all meeting Anthony, with whom we’d corresponded and spoken over the previous few months, since the idea of a convention in Chicago was first floated last August. Tim and I had been involved in our first International Photobooth Convention in 2005, just a few months after we’d begun this site, so this time around, I felt a lot more comfortable in the world of the photobooth, and had made a lot more connections, discoveries, and acquaintances that proved helpful in the meantime .

One such connection was with Martin of Schnellfoto.ru, who had gotten in touch through the website a few weeks before the convention and offered a collaborative project for convention-goers in Chicago to participate in. In the Schnellfoto booth in Moscow, various people offered questions to Chicagoans, written in Russian on cards and held up to the camera in the photobooth. Martin FedEx’ed the strips, with translations, to me, and I brought them to Chicago, where we distributed them to people to answer with a response photostrip. The project attracted a lot of enthusiasm, and we got some terrific, witty, and creative answers. I’m in the middle of assembling a small booklet of the questions and answers side by side, which we’ll make available on the site when I’m finished.



Steve “Mixup” Howard, the founding father of the International Photobooth Convention, made the trek from England, and, along with Nakki Goranin and Dina Stander, made up the core group of returnees from our previous convention in 2005. It was great to see them again, and to have their art and collections hanging on the walls of the gallery, just like last time. We made some new friends this time, putting faces with names we’d emailed with over the years, including Danny Minnick from San Francisco; Connie Begg, proud owner of a new (old) photobooth, also from the Bay Area; and Carole and Siobhan of Photomovette in London, who are busy preparing to reintroduce the photochemical booth to London after a few years of painful absence.



The panel discussion on day two was also a highlight, as Tim led a talk among the hosts and distinguished guests, including Anthony, Mixup, Nakki, and Nick Osborn of SquareAmerica.com and co-author of the fantastic new book Who We Were: A Snapshot History of America.

Despite the long series of late nights spent preparing, enjoying, and then cleaning up after the convention, we were even able to get in a little photobooth-hunting, as Tim, Danny, and I hit three photobooths to add to our directory: Quenchers, Weegee’s Lounge, and Bar Deville. By the end of it all, there was fleeting talk of doing it all again in a year (or two or three), so we’ll see what happens. Thanks to everyone who came for making it a terrific event.

Check out the official wrap-up page for the convention, and stay tuned for the online gallery of artwork and other multimedia from the event.

We’ve put up another batch of photos, from the second day of the Convention, on Flickr. They’ve been added to the 2009 IPC set.

Anthony leads his sold-out “Altered Photography” workshop:



Some of the art and collections on the walls of the gallery:



Danny and Nick talk photography:



One of our younger convention-goers gets ready to take photos in the booth:

Check out all of the photos in our set, as well as the photos (and photostrips) of others in the 2009 IPC group pool on Flickr (thanks to Arielle for setting it up).

After an amazing and exhausting International Photobooth Convention this weekend, the various organizers are still unloading trucks, cars, and suitcases, so it will take bit before we can get a full run-down on the events and highlights, but for now, we’ll put up a few photos and videos to give those who weren’t able to make it an idea of what it was like.





Check out the full set of photos on Flickr.



We took some video over the weekend, some of which we’ve already posted below. More is on the way, so check out a few videos on Vimeo.

And finally, we designed some t‑shirts and debuted them at the Convention. Currently there are two in the entire world, one for each half of Photobooth.net, but we’d love to see some more around. Order a shirt, take a photostrip of yourself wearing it, and send it our way! Check out our Photobooth.net t‑shirts at Spreadshirt.

Photobooth Convention from Photobooth on Vimeo.

The photobooth gang are at Center Portion setting up booths and hanging art. The convention opens tonight at 7:00, and we’ll be here all day getting ready.

Unloading the photobooth from Photobooth on Vimeo.

We’ll see you here!

Your 2009 International Photobooth Convention organizers are hard at work preparing for the event from their respective corners of the country as the big day gets ever closer. We’re now just one month away from the opening night, April 3, at Center Portion in Chicago. 

We’ve had a lot of interest via email and through our Facebook group, and would encourage all photobooth artists, collectors, and experimenters out there to contribute to the event, whether or not you can attend. As part of the convention, we’ll be curating a group show of art created in and inspired by the photobooth as well as collections of vernacular or found photobooth photos. Check out the Call for Entries (PDF) if you’re interested in submitting a piece or collection for the show.