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.

We’ve posted the first of the backlog of submissions and new additions to the site since our hiatus; in the true spirit of summer, they’re locations at state fairgrounds and beachside boardwalks. 

Check out the black and white photobooths at the Minnesota State Fair in Minneapolis, as well as Jilly’s Arcade and Castaway Cove in Ocean City, New Jersey. Thanks to Tony for the Minnesota booth, and thanks to my friend Molly for doing what no other friend has, and following through on that promise: “Oh, you run a website about photobooths? Next time I see one, I’ll take a picture of it for you.“



Photo by Molly Wheeler

We received an email with photos from a couple named Peter and Ina in the Netherlands a few weeks ago, and it’s taken me this long just to recover from the shock of seeing their gorgeous photobooth in all its original glory. This gem may be the best-looking booth I’ve ever seen.



Thanks to Peter and Ina for sharing the booth, just one item in their amazing collection of games, jukeboxes, and other machines. Here’s Ina’s account of how they came across it:

About twelve years ago, when I saw this thing for the first time, it was love at first sight for me. The photobooth was in a jukebox store in Amstelveen in the Netherlands, and I had never seen something like it before. Unfortunately, my husband didn’t see in it what I saw, so in spite of all the hints I gave him over the years, the booth stayed where it was: in the jukebox store.

The asking price was rather high and this booth also takes a lot of space, so there weren’t many people seriously interested and the guys who owned the photobooth didn’t sell it. 

Because the owners wanted to quit their business, they put a lot of stuff on sale, and that’s why, after all those years, I was delighted to get it as a Christmas present last Christmas. And above all…for a more than reasonable price.

My husband made me really glad and believe it or not, by now he almost likes it more than I do. The condition of the booth is rather great so we don’t have to restore it and as far as we can see, the mechanisms also work well. Now we are trying to find out what chemicals we need to actually make it work again and I think, with the hope of a couple of handy friends, this will work out.

We’ll post any news we get on the progress of the booth as it comes in.

As our list of photobooth locations around the world has grown over the last five years, we’ve often thought of better ways to organize and present the information on the site. Some people like the big list of every single location we know of, but most people who use our site to find a photobooth are curious about booths in a particular city or state, or would like to see all of our photobooths plotted on a map. If you agree, well, this is your lucky day, because we’ve just launched a completely re-vamped Photobooth Directory with three ways to find what you’re looking for.

You can search for all photobooth listing that mention the word “arcade”; you can browse all photobooths in the state of Illinois, for those who will be attending the International Photobooth Convention this weekend; and you can also locate all of our photobooth listings on a map, which displays all of our locations arrayed around the globe.

We’re excited to get this much-needed feature out to the world before the start of the International Photobooth Convention, and we’ve got many more improvements to make and features to add in the future. Here’s hoping you find it useful.

In the midst of planning for this year’s Photobooth Convention this week, we received a great email, of the sort that reminds us why we started this site four years ago. It’s about the booths, sure, but it’s also about the people who love them, who keep them alive, bring them back from the dead, and make them available for people to enjoy, all over the world. 

The email came from Martin and Ira in Moscow, the two photobooth enthusiasts behind Schnellfoto.ru (also listed in our Projects section).



Along with photos of a photobooth and a scan of a photostrip, they sent the detailed story of how the photobooth came to be, and it’s quite a story.

One of us (Ira) is a photographer from Moscow, the other one (Martin) a german journalist, living in Moscow for more than ten years. Ira got enthusiastic for classical photobooths when we visited Geneva some years ago (the swiss booths were still running at this time). About a year ago we started looking for a machine ourselves. We phoned around all over europe, but it showed out that nearly all booth operators had already switched to digital, and, horrible as it is, thrown away and destroyed the older machines.

After a phase of disenchantment, we did some more desperate calls in Moscow, and it showed out that one — the last — M‑22 had escaped the massacre by miracle, and was standing in the rain in the courtyard of a former soviet ball-bearing plant — some 2000 meters from our own house. We acquired it for a modest amount of money. Inside was a mayhem: flash generator and capacitors were stolen, as well as nearly all plugs, switches and other somehow vendible equipment, most of the cable harnesses were dumbly cut through. The mechanics (transmission, spider, paper transport, even camera) though were intact. Then followed three months of work in the evenings in a rusty soviet garage. We got a flash from an operator in europe, rebuilt all the rest ourselves, including wiring, money accepting system, outside decoration etc. etc.

The booth made its debut last summer for one day on the so-called “picnic Afisha” — the biggest summer festival in Moscow, with a huge success. Now, at the new location, we plan to stage different events with the machine — a portrait festival, a contest for the best strip, and Ira is going to use it in her work as a photographer.

You can find the location of the booth (at the Winzavod Contemporary Art Center in a former wine factory) on a Google map on the booth’s page in our Directory, but I’ll also include it here, in Russian, just because it looks wonderful:

ВИНЗАВОД — Центр современного искусства

4‑й Сыромятнический переулок, дом 1, стр. 6 

Москва

Россия

Their site is worth looking around (even if you can’t read Russian) for the photos of the booth in action and for the video of a Russian TV feature on the booth that includes a part on Anatol Josepho, the Russian father of the photobooth, as well as Martin and Ira in their booth.

We’re very pleased to have this new addition to our directory, and even more pleased to have made another far-flung connection with kindred spirits in the global photobooth community.

A weekend visit to San Diego was a bit of a disappointment in terms of functioning photochemical photobooths out in the wild, but it wasn’t a complete loss. First, the bad news: the photobooth at the Corvette Diner has indeed been replaced with a digital booth, and the photobooths at the Waterfront, U 31 and the Ruby Room are all digital. The two photobooths at the Museum of Photographic Arts in Balboa Park are still there, but both were out of order during my visit. The photobooth at the Beauty Bar is also no longer there, which leaves a pretty poor verdict for real photobooths in San Diego. If anyone knows of any we’ve missed, please let us know; we’d love to hear some good news.



The saving grace of our visit was a chance to see photographer Tim Mantoani’s beautiful Model 9 photobooth, which lives in his San Diego studio and is occasionally used for photo shoots and parties.



Tim was kind enough to take time out of his holiday weekend to meet me and let me have a look at the booth — it’s a real beauty, in great working order, and is complete with the top sign, two different sets of advertising inserts for the wraparounds, and the operating manuals.



We first came across Tim’s work in early 2005, when we noted his photobooth-like photoshoot for the 2005 Pro Bowl in Sports Illustrated. We’ve been in touch since, and were happy to have the opportunity to see his photobooth in person. Thanks again, Tim.



We’ve also made a few new additions to our Movies & TV section:

First, filling in a gap in the decades for the 1950s (we now have booth appearances in every decade from the 1920s to the present, save the 1930s…and I know there’s got to be a ’30s musical with a booth out there somewhere…), we’ve got Vincente Minnelli’s The Band Wagon, starring Fred Astaire, Cyd Charisse, and, briefly, a Photomatic photobooth.



Gus Van Sant is in the news thanks to his recent release Milk, Nicole Kidman for her turn in Australia, and Joaquin Phoenix for vowing to be done with acting; once upon a time, they were all working together, in a photobooth, in To Die For.



Further back, we added scenes from a Swedish ski vacation comedy, Snowroller, a Hong Kong shoot-’em-up called Fong juk, Robert Altman’s classic interpretation of the Philip Marlowe story The Long Goodbye, and Agnes Varda’s gritty story of a roaming vagabond, Sans toit ni loi. Four more different films it would be challenging to find, but they all share a photobooth in common.

On the television front, we’ve also had some recent additions: first, some TV shows that feature pseudo-photostrips in their opening credit sequences, The Ex List and ‘Til Death.



Thanks to Klaas, we also added an old episode of the now-defunct Charmed, and thanks to Stephanie, a first-season episode of Pushing Daisies. Another new TV season also seems to always bring a photostrip appearance in a pilot episode; this year it’s The Mentalist.

From a Gothamist piece this week we learn that MTV is finally shutting down TRL, a.k.a Total Request Live, that staple of the early millennial teen zeitgeist, and the reason America got to know Carson Daly, for better or worse.

TRL’s photobooth, an honest-to-goodness photochemical booth in the land of digital everything, produced thousands of strips commemorating the visits of musicians, actors, athletes, and all-purpose celebrities, many of which were cataloged in the 2002 book TRL Photobooth. Pick up a copy of the book to check out the photos, or browse through the ones collected online at MTV.com.

Our question now is, “Where are those photostrips going?” Hopefully, they’ll end up saved in the MTV archive, or put on display in another MTV building, but let’s hope they don’t get tossed out with the set.

“TRL photobooth wall” photo by Jen Carlson, Gothamist.com

As we near the end of Book Week, we’re taking a look at another excellent recent photobooth book from Europe, Irene Stutz’s Das Einfränklerimperium. We covered the book when it was released in December of last year, but it deserves another look now that we have a copy (thanks again to Irene and Tobias for getting the book across the ocean to me).

The book, which originated from Stutz’s thesis project for a visual communications degree from Zurich University of the Arts, tells the history of Schnellphoto AG, the Swiss photobooth company that ran photobooths around the country for more than four decades.

Through essays, photographs, and interviews, Stutz tells the story of Christoph and Martin Balke, the brothers who ran Schnellphoto, from the 1960s until 2007, when the photochemical booths were phased out. Not only is the book a comprehensive history of the company, and of a nation’s relationship with its photobooths, but it contains a stunning series of mostly black-and-white photographs of not only the photobooths themselves, but of everything that made up the world of the photobooths: offices, manuals, equipment, spare parts, maps, charts, letters, and files. Stutz comprehensively documents the world of equipment, paper, and machinery that helped Schnellphoto design, manage, repair, and market the photobooths.

If you are interested in learning about how a photobooth works, and want to learn about the dying art of running a photobooth business, this book is a must, and Stutz’s photos are not only technically and historically illuminating, but they are beautiful portraits in their own right.



The book also includes hundreds of photobooth photos, most in that uniquely Swiss horizontal orientation, as well as advertisements, newspaper articles, cartoons, and other ephemera related to the booths. My German is a little better than my Italian, so the text is a little more comprehensible than in some of the other works I’ve profiled this week, and they are fascinating, on everything from the components of the company — the factory, the patent, the machinery, the paper, and chemicals that combine to make a photobooth — to the role of the photobooth in creating friendships, and the place of the photobooth in the digital world.



The book is widely available online, and is well worth seeking out. It is a testament to Stutz’s devotion to these booths, and to her talent as a photographer and writer, and will stand as the definitive story of photobooths in Switzerland. Let’s hope enthusiasts in other countries are inspired to create similar histories of their own.

Visit the website for the book for more information.

Thanks to some new-found success locating old TV shows and some helpful contributions from readers, we’ve been making steady progress adding to the growing body of photobooth knowledge and information over the past few weeks.

First, from our contributors, two western American photobooths we’ve long heard of but haven’t had the chance to visit: the great old booth at Arcade Amusements in Manitou Springs, Colorado, seen at right. It’s one of those booths that’s been at its location “forever,” and we’re glad it’s still working.

Second, we received a report and photos from a Model 20A at

Stellar Pizza, Ale, & Cocktails, located in Seattle, adding to that city’s impressive tally of photochemical photobooths.

In the world of TV, we’ve added a few obscure and international shows over the last few weeks, including two British shows: an episode of “Midsomer Murders” and one from the BBC’s “The Smoking Room,” seen here:



On the domestic front, we’ve finally been able to get images from two long-standing photobooths-on-TV rumors: first, we’ve got Scooby-Doo, Dick van Dyke, and a photobooth, as the gang visits a “Haunted Carnival” (what else?). And finally, we’ve watched it so you don’t have to: an episode of “Power Rangers in Space” which lifts the “superhero caught changing from mild-mannered alter ego in a photobooth” plotline from Superman III.

It’s safe to say that for many of our younger readers, the 2001 film Amélie is one of the first things that comes to mind when they think of photobooths, or at least provides one of the strongest associations they have with photobooths, living as we do in a time that is somewhere on the downhill side of the “golden age” of the photochemical photobooth.

The thought that as the film was being released, photochemical photobooths had completely disappeared from Metro stations and street corners in Paris, seemed like a cruel irony indeed: the film captured a moment in time that no longer existed. But thanks to Ole, Dorothée, Eddy, and everyone else at Photoautomat, Paris is once again home to a black and white, photochemical photobooth.

The photobooth, located at the Palais de Tokyo along the Seine, has been in place since late 2007, and is now listed in our directory.

They’ve recently installed another photobooth in Paris, at the Point Ephemere, which we’ll list as soon as we get the photos.