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.

We’ve got two new additions to our ever-surprising, ever-growing catalog of photobooths in movies and television. This section, along with the Photobooth Directory, was one of the earliest parts of this website, and it’s still one of the most interesting and oft-updated. 

I watch a lot of movies as part of my job, as well as a fair number of trailers as of late, and for the first time, last week, I was watching a trailer for a film I’d never seen (or even heard of) and out of the blue, I spotted a photobooth! My colleagues probably wondered why I shouted “Hey!” in the middle of the screening, but then again, most of them know about this site, so they probably weren’t too surprised. The film was a mostly forgotten 1971 comedy starring David Niven, Virna Lisi, John Cleese, and Robert Vaughn, called The Statue.

Niven plays Alex Bolt, a Nobel prize-winning linguist who spends more attention to his work than his wife, a sculptor played by Lisi. As a way of exacting her revenge for a life of neglect, she sculpts an 18′ tall statue of her husband for display in Grosvenor Square, but gives the statue another man’s appendage, so to speak, and tells her husband it’s not modeled on his. 

Bolt then spends the rest of the movie trying to find the man who provided his wife with the life model for that particular part. He uses a photobooth, one of the only ways to get a photo taken without anyone else seeing the results in those days before digital, to take a set of photos of his own to compare against. It’s not a terrific film, but the pleasure of seeing the strait-laced Niven stripping down in a photobooth in a groovy teenage arcade is pretty funny.

We also received a tip from our friend Jeff, the man behind the Art of Waiting contest we helped out with last year, that a photochemical booth made an appearance in the background of a recent episode of “The Chicago Code.” His eagle eye was right; after freeze-framing on the photobooth in the scene and comparing it with every booth we have listed in Chicago, we confirmed that the scene was shot at Skylark, home to this photobooth. I thought the bar looked somewhat familiar; I had visited there in 2005, at the end of a very long day visiting 17 photobooth locations around the city. Upon closer inspection, you can see a piece of paper on the door that reads “Skylark” as the police enter the bar; when they leave, though, a larger sign above the door reads “McGowan’s Pub,” in line with the plot centering on Irish mob criminal activity.

Our friends at Chicago’s 312 Photobooth have opened a studio in nearby Oak Park where you can take your picture in a photobooth, peruse their photography-related items for sale, arrange the rental of a booth for your next party, and check out photography on display on their walls.

The studio features multiple working photobooths, including a beautiful Model 11, which we’ve listed in our Photobooth Directory.

Anthony and Andrea and their new digs have been featured in the local press on more than one occasion lately. Read about the 312 Photobooth Studio in the local Oak Park Leaves as well as the TribLocal for Oak Park.

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.

We were pleased this week to get our hands on a copy of Cameron Woo’s new book Photobooth Dogs, a charming collection of photobooth photos of dogs (with and without their owners) spanning the 80+ year history of the invention.

We were first introduced to Cameron, who’s the co-founder and creative director of the dog-centric magazine Bark, when we heard about a collection of photobooth photos of dogs he put together for a 2005 issue of the magazine.

Later on, Cameron asked us for help in finding photos of dogs in photobooths, and though we weren’t able to be of much help, we were excited to hear about his book. Having had a chance to take a look at it, it’s been worth the wait: the book is a wonderful collection of photos, each with a story to tell about the beloved pets they capture.

It’s very nicely designed, features excellent photo reproduction, and intersperses a (very) few choice quotations about dogs between the photos. I especially appreciate the visual guide to sources at the end, for the few photos in the book that aren’t in Cameron’s personal collection.

The book has a page on the Bark website, with a link to buy the book as well.

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.

United States $15.00 International $20.00

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).