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.

We’ve been busy dealing with some behind-the-scenes issues on the blog lately, but that hasn’t slowed our continuing effort to add to our ever-growing catalog of photobooths in popular culture and in the world at large. 

First, we have a major update to our listings for the city of Portland. The city seems like a hospitable home for photochemical photobooths, but this hasn’t always been the case. Back when I visited the city in 2004, we were only able to find but one working photobooth in town. Just a few years later, things have changed in a big way, and Portland now ranks with Chicago and New York as an American photobooth capital. 

Thanks to Victoria for sending us photos and information for these these seven new photobooth locations:

Alleyway Cafe and Bar

Beauty Bar

My Father’s Place

Slingshot Lounge

Star Bar

The Boiler Room

The Saratoga

Next up, more updates in our quest to catalog photobooths in film and television. First, television, in the form of both programs and commercials. 

Ellen

A commercial for the bladder control medicine Vesicare

Wildfire

Fringe

And, thank goodness, The Bachelor

And now, film. First, Richard Kelly’s Southland Tales, thanks to Igor for the tip.

And finally, Jean Aurel’s 1964 comedy De l’amour, which I regard as a great discovery in the world of photobooths in cinema. Thanks, Les Matons!

The newspapers of Australia’s Fairfax Media Limited have hit the stands today with a one-two punch of photobooth-related stories by reporter Lindy Percival. First, the bad news: in The Age, Percival interviews Melbourne photobooth proprietor Alan Adler in a piece titled “Future of the old photo booth not so picture perfect” (archived on our site here). Adler, who has been running photochemical booths in Melbourne for nearly 40 years, sees the end of the business in sight, saying “We’re having trouble getting paper at the moment. I’ve got a couple of months’ supply and I’m hoping I get some more, but it’s becoming very expensive … We’ll keep going for another couple of years probably. But I’d sooner be playing with my grandchildren than playing with photo booths.” Here’s hoping he keeps up the booths as long as he can; we know those machines have a lot of fans (see our Melbourne listings here, here, and here).

Then, of course, there’s the good news. In a companion piece in the Sydney Morning Herald called “The strip of a lifetime” (archived here), Percival writes about the enthusiasts and artists who are still using the photochemical booths today, with a timely look at Raynal Pellicer’s book Photobooth: The Art of the Automatic Portrait (which we’ll review soon) and a mention of our site as well. Australia’s photobooths are some of the furthest-flung examples of the photochemical machine still in use today, cherished by locals and sought out by visitors, and we hope renewed interest thanks to these articles will help them continue well into the future.

Our listings for Australia got a boost this month as we received five submissions from Victoria (the person, not the state), both black and white and color booths from Melbourne and Adelaide.

Included in the updates is the legendary Flinders Street Station in Melbourne, where Elvis Costello shot his video for “I Wanna Be Loved” (though the booth has changed over the years).

The newly listed locations are as follows:

Flinders Street Station I

Flinders Street Station II

Century City Walk

Myer Centre Adelaide I

Myer Centre Adelaide II

Thanks again to Victoria for filling in some more holes in the Great Photobooth Map!

Thanks to Amy Powell for letting us know about the black and white booth at Club 185 in Ohio’s capital city, Columbus. 

She also sent in a series of scanned photostrips as well as digital photos of those photos being taken:

We’re happy to add another booth to our directory, and encourage our readers to help out by making a new year’s resolution: tell us about that booth you and your friends have been visiting for years but that isn’t listed on our site yet. Contribute a booth today!

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.

Movies:
The Comebacks (2007)
The Joneses (2009)
A Casa de Alice (2007)

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.

Music Videos:
“Touch a New Day” by Lena Meyer-Landrut

“Never Said” by Liz Phair

In Print:
Emily Blunt in a photobooth in Interview Magazine.

Shots: A Magazine about Fine Photography, a 1989 large-format photography zine special issue dedicated to photobooths. 

Thanks to news from two Paris-based photobooth groups, La Joyeuse de Photographie and Foto Automat France, we have a burst of news from the new photobooth hotspot of Europe.

First, we have a new listing for Foto Automat France’s black and white photobooth at the Cinematheque Francaise, a perfect location for this mini-film studio. Foto Automat France is also running a black and white machine at Au vieux Saumur, one of the oldest bars in Paris.

From La Joyeuse, we have two new listings and one change. First, Le 104, where the striking red-striped machine has been replaced by a familiar machine, the photobooth that once lived at the Empty Bottle in Chicago.

At Citadium, the largest street culture shop in Paris, has a new booth as well.

Finally, La Joyeuse de Photographie is behind a collaborative project at Les Prairies de Paris called Labomaton, which features a modified Model 14 photobooth. Igor describes the project this way:

La Joyeuse de Photographie has teamed up with the photographer Fred Lebain by providing a photobooth in the hopes to create a unique project. The project, named Labomaton, was born as an idea that the silver photobooths haven’t yet said their last word, and that even today, artists from around the world could use these booths to their advantage in a creative and intelligent manner. We hope that this project could be exhibited by 2011.

Labomaton will participate in PHOTO-OFF, the young and upcoming photographers art fair (18–21 November, at La Bellevilloise, Paris).

Kate Burt, writing for The Independent on Sunday, has written a nice piece on the current state of photobooths in the UK, and around the world, titled “Camera obscurer: Meet the enthusiasts that are determined to keep photo booths alive.” She was kind enough to contact us for the piece, and includes some of our thoughts on photochemical booths. Also featured are digital entrepreneurs The Mighty Booth and The Expressive Booth, as well as our fellow photochemical enthusiasts Carole and Siobhan of Photomovette, Alex of Photoautomat, and Steve “Mixup” Howard.

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…” 

Thanks to Kate for a great piece, which you can also find archived on our site.

Our friends at Photomovette are taking part in a great event this Friday: a celebration of the 100th anniversary of the introduction of the motion picture to the people of South East London. The New Cross Cinematograph Theatre opened October 22, 1910, in the same location where Photomovette have their black and white booth, an event and exhibition space called Utrophia.

We are very excited to be taking part in a very special event at Utrophia, home of our photobooth. The New Cross Cinematograph Theatre opened on the spot of Utrophia in 1910, providing the people of South East London their first look at moving image. It was officially opened by the Mayor of Greenwich and Deptford on 22 October 1910, and now, exactly a hundred years later, Utrophia are re-enacting the occasion with the creation of a portal that loops back to that time and space, charting the ensuing journey of how we captured and represented the light of life. Dress up, eat cake, marvel at light projections and document the process in true old-fashioned style in one of the only black and white booths in London!

For more on the event, see Photomovette and Utrophia.

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!