I just returned from a brief visit to Europe where photobooths still abound in all the usual places (post offices, train and subway stations, arcades.) However, I am sad to report that 99% of the booths I encountered were digital. London was the one exception, and two of the photobooths there were the highlight of my trip.

The past year has seen the re-emergence of chemical photobooths in The Big Smoke thanks to the industrious efforts of two independent outfits: Photomovette and Photoautomat. As luck would have it, I hit the city at the perfect time to see activity from both companies. October 31st marked the closing of Photoautomat’s show at Cargo; the following evening Photomovette was hosting an opening party for their booth. I spent the morning of the 31st hanging out at Cargo, chatting with Alex and taking in the show.

Following a quick lunch of steak & ale pie and mashy peas (in case you were wondering), I met up with Carole and Siobhan, the women of Photomovette. I proved not very helpful in resolving a few of their remaining booth idiosyncrasies, but they were gracious hosts nonetheless. They were busy putting the final touches on their booth and organizing the venue for their party the following evening.

After parting company, I headed for the Tube to make my way back to my West London lodging. The subway ride was notable for two reasons: 1) I happened to sit beneath an ad adorned with a fake photostrip and 2) it occurred to me I had inadvertently slated my travel for Halloween. If you’ve never experienced it, trust me when I tell you it is slightly disorienting to experience a new place on Halloween. It certainly left me wondering if London Tube traffic was always as colorful, or if it had something to do with the holiday. See for yourself:

For those of you who missed either of the above-mentioned festivities, fret not, more opportunity awaits you. Alex’s booth remains at Cargo, and is outside in the beer garden. Feel free to stop by anytime. As for Carole and Siobhan, they are hosting another photobooth party on the 13th of December.

Just when you start to think you’re hearing more about photobooths disappearing than you are about new locations being discovered, a kind reader of our site will send in a massive update that makes you feel a little better about the whole situation. Courtesy of Meags Fitzgerald, we just received a big update, twelve photobooths in all, none of which have appeared on the site before. 

We’re adding them in installments, so the first to go up are the Canadian locations: nine booths in Alberta and one in Vancouver. The majority of the new booths are in Calgary, which just jumped from “unlisted” to somewhere in the top ten as far as active photochemical photobooth cities are concerned. We’ve always known that Canada is home to many active photobooths, but beyond a few in Toronto and BC, we haven’t had much documentation before now.

So here they are:

Edmonton City Centre 

Bonnie Doon Shopping Centre, Edmonton

Northland Village Mall I, Calgary

Northland Village Mall II, Calgary

North Hill Centre, Calgary

Eau Claire Market, Calgary

Deerfoot Mall, Calgary

Chinook Centre, Calgary

Calgary Greyhound Station

Antisocial Skate Shop, Vancouver

I don’t think we’ve ever seen a photobooth decked out like a bag of popcorn (at the Chinook Mall), but now that I see it, I can’t believe no one else seems to have thought of it before now. Very nice. Thanks to Meags for these locations, and we’ll have the rest of her contributions soon.

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.

I am tempted to lobby for a name change of the convention to “Photobooth Family Reunion” as I feel it captures the spirit of event much more accurately than our tongue-in-cheek use of the term “convention.” I know some disparage the family reunion with an eye-roll and the chuckle reserved for a scene from a National Lampoon Family Vacation, but my experiences with said reunions are solid gold. This year’s convention was no exception, and it had all the requisite parts: the relatives you look forward to seeing from reunions past (Nakki, Dina), the patriarch of the family keeping an eye on all the festivities (Mixup), the famous great uncle whom you’ve heard stories about for years but never met (Todd Erickson), the relatives you meet and love, but never knew you had (Carole, Siobhan, Connie), the cool relative from California that you wish lived closer (Danny), all the family members you knew existed, but didn’t know their names until now (all the artists, attendees, and Center Portion gang), and of course, the perpetual family cheerleaders, the reunion organizers who are never quite sure anyone else likes reunions as much as they do (Anthony, Brian, and me!). And need I mention, what family reunion is complete without a boatload of photographs (both archival and emerging)? Then you have the few uncles who bust out family videos for everyone to watch (the shorts program, the documentary on the booth innards) and the genealogy-obsessed aunt who organizes a sit-down Q&A with the oldest members of the family in order to hear stories soon to be lost in time (the panel discussion). Throw in a few art projects for the kids (the altered photo workshop and Russian “space bridge” project) and some general revelry, and you’ve got all the necessary ingredients. The only thing missing, in my estimation, was jello salad.

Anthony proved a more-than-capable host, navigating the grassroots art scene in Chicago to provide us with commemorative convention buttons (via Busy Beaver Button Company) and a fantastic silkscreened convention poster (from artist Shawn Stucky) as well as generously commandeering a portion of his photobooth fleet and faithful support staff (thanks Andrea, Eric, Carol, and Brad) for use at the convention. Be sure to check out Anthony’s vast array of artistic and economic involvements.

Brian already mentioned it, but it bears repeating: Sheila, Greg, and family were awesome. Thanks to them for their attentive but laid-back hospitality. If you live in and around Chicago, keep an eye on the schedule of events at the Center Portion. You won’t be disappointed.

Brian (in true form) failed to mention his amazing talk on the history of photobooths in cinema. It was an updated and expanded version of the (stellar) talk he gave in St. Louis during the 2005 Convention. When I introduced Brian, I said his talk was my favorite part of the last convention — and I wasn’t kidding. His talk is something that would be appreciated by a much larger audience — perhaps we can convince him to post some version of it online someday.

Special thanks to the folks who agreed (some of them on very short notice) to sit as part of the panel discussion I moderated: Nakki, Nick, Mixup, Brian, and Anthony. If we are able to salvage any footage from the two video cameras that ran out of batteries, we’ll post a portion of the fireside chat. I really enjoyed the different perspectives the panelists brought and only wished it could have lasted longer. We only scratched the surface.

Travel for me is always much more about the people and much less about the place — this trip to Chicago was filled with wonderful and kind people, some old and some new. I did manage to see some of my Chicago peeps (Kenner, Maureen, Nils, Joanie — thanks for coming out!) and was generously housed by cousin Doug and fed by cousin Hayes (my own mini family reunion).

There was some chatter about the next convention and there seems to be growing support for having them more regularly. When asked about the dates of the next convention, Brian and I always answer with a smile, “When are you willing to host it?” We look forward to the next gathering, whenever that might be.

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!

Those of you who have submitted artwork for consideration should have heard back regarding our selections — if you haven’t drop us a line. We have also finalized the schedule of events. Limited editions of this silkscreened poster will be available for purchase at convention.