As Book Week continues, we bring you another invaluable work from Italy, Professor Federica Muzzarelli’s 2003 work, Formato tessera: Storia, arte e idee in photomatic. Muzzarelli, who is a professor of the History of Photography at the University of Bologna, has written a book that covers the story of photobooths from all angles: the history of portrait photography, the role of the photobooth in the creation of art, the photobooth’s place in popular culture, and the digital future of photobooths, among many other topics.



Without fluent Italian skills, our understanding of the book is naturally less than complete, but a rough translation of the chapter headings, a perusal of the plentiful and wide-ranging sources cited in footnotes, and a glance at the excellent illustrations — from early carte de visites to Marcello Mastroianni, from Duchamp to Benetton ads — make it clear that Muzzarelli’s work is the most rigorous academic survey of the history and significance of the photobooth that we have yet seen.



We hope the book will eventually receive an English translation; until then, it is available for purchase through a variety of online retailers. Thanks to Professor Muzzarelli for her work on this excellent resource, and for getting in touch with us here to share Formato tessera with us.

Covering the world of photobooths as we do from our home base in the United States, it’s often difficult for us to gauge the impact and explore the history of photobooths in other countries. We know about the present-day fotoautomaten around Germany, and about the demise of photochemical booths in Switzerland, and the interesting booths we’ve learned about in places like Helsinki and Kiev, but we don’t have a tangible sense of the depth of influence that the photobooth has had in many places outside our own sphere.

Over the years, though, thanks to enthusiasts and scholars around the world, we’ve been able to learn more about the role of the photobooth internationally. The importance of the photobooth in Italian arts and history in particular has become increasingly clear, and though it seems nearly all photochemical booths have been wiped off the Italian map, we have ample evidence of their historical significance.

Today, we present the first of two Italian photobooth books we’ve learned of recently: Photomatic e altre storie, a collection of works by the photographer Franco Vaccari, with accompanying essays by art historians and critics. I’d first like to thank Marco for letting us know about this book and for sending us a copy as part of an international photobooth book exchange — who knows how long it would have taken us to come across it without Marco’s help.

Franco Vaccari, a photographer who has been exhibiting work in Italy and around the world for more than 40 years, is best known for his “Exhibitions in Real Time,” primarily the piece he exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 1972, “Leave a photographic trace of your passage on these walls.” Visitors to the exhibition found a photobooth in the middle of a room, and were encouraged to take a photostrip and hang it on the wall.

Vaccari also collected submissions of photostrips from ordinary Italians, taken in 700 photobooths all over the country, some of which are collected in the book.



One of the most appealing elements of the book for us is the series of portraits of the photobooths themselves, looking timeless but also very much of their era, in train stations, city centers, and along the side of the road.



If you’re interested in the international history of photobooths, and in the investigations into individuality and identity that Vaccari undertakes, we highly recommend picking up this book, which seems to be available from a number of European booksellers, as well as the publisher.

As we continue to catalog the history of photobooths, the photos they produce, and the way people viewed, displayed, and shared those photos, we’ve come across some interesting items on eBay.



This beautiful deco frame, made to perfectly fit one photobooth photo, held a beautiful hand-tinted photo of a woman in a hat and fur. After it arrived, I noticed that another piece of paper seemed to be sitting behind the photo, and when I pulled it out, I discovered that it was another photo from the same strip. I pulled out the original photo, and discovered two more photos, as well, making what seemed to be the complete strip. None of the other three photos are tinted.

The corners of each photo are worn enough that I can’t be sure they all came from the same strip; they could be the chosen four from two sittings done one after the other, but either way, it was an excellent unadvertised surprise.

We continue Photomaton Week here at Photobooth.net (don’t worry, it’s unofficial, you didn’t miss the announcement) with a spectacular trove of French photographic history. Thanks to a Google Alert pointing out a post on Dinosaurs and Robots, we found this group of photos that fits right in with the renaissance (nice) of the Parisian photobooth: an amazing set of more than 150 photobooth shots from the 1930s — 1950s, all featuring the friendly face of Willy Michel, Photomaton’s man in Paris during that time.

Titled “Aux origines du Photomaton,” the set of photos features faces that will be familiar to fans of the films of Melville, Clouzot, and Renoir, as well as some other recognizable faces, including a young Errol Flynn, Bing Crosby, Erich von Stroheim (wow!) and Arthur Rubenstein. Almost more fascinating than the faces of the actors are the faces of Michel, sometimes eerily consistent from photo to photo, but also greatly changed over the decades the photos were taken. It’s worth the time it takes to flip through all of these priceless photos, each a testament to the enduring power of the photobooth to capture a genuine, spontaneous moment in time.

Willy Michel and Charles Boyer from Aux origines du Photomaton.

As many of our readers already know, from the notices it has received in The New Yorker and the New York Times, and mentions on our site and around the web, the book American Photobooth by our friend and colleague Nakki Goranin has been published, after many years of collecting, research, and writing on Nakki’s part. Our copy arrived in the mail today, as did an email about some related events in New York City, both of which we’ll discuss here.

Nakki’s book is a part history, part photo gallery, a lavishly illustrated 220+ pages of photobooth goodness, and anyone interested in the fascinating journey of photobooths from a small town in Siberia to every arcade, boardwalk, and drugstore in America and beyond, should pick up a copy.

The first eighty pages or so detail the history of the booth, from Anatol Josepho’s Photomaton through the various technological iterations and important families who contributed to the evolution of the booth, all the way up to digital booths in the present day. The remainder of the book consists of photos from Nakki’s collection, a wide variety of single photos, photostrips, hand-colored pictures, photomatic frames, photos from every era and walk of life imaginable.

In addition to the aforementioned press, the book has also been featured in The Telegraph, Vermont Public Radio, and People Magazine, among other national and international media outlets. Visit the

Pine Street Art Works blog for more on the opening for the book, held there in February.

For our readers in the New York metro area, this Saturday, May 17th, brings a chance to hear Nakki discuss her book at the Jefferson Market Branch of the New York Public Library (Ave. of the Americas at 10th St.), and a related exhibition of photobooth photos from librarian, artist, and collector Billy Parrott will be on display in the lobby, and will be available through the end of May. We encourage our readers in the area to stop by and let us know how the talk and show go.

American Photobooth will be available for purchase at the talk, and is, of course, available from Amazon and everywhere books are sold, as they say.

Our hearty congratulations to Nakki on a great achievement, and a wonderful resource for photobooth enthusiasts to enjoy for years to come. We know how long you’ve been working on the book, and we’re happy to see it out in the world for all to enjoy.

We’ve got a few updates this week, from the four (or at least three) corners of the media world. First, from mainstream TV, an advertisement that proves you can use a photobooth to sell anything. The Venus Embrace razor is the product in this case, in an ad that encourages women to use the razor and “Reveal the Goddess in You.” In one of a half-dozen scenes in the commercial, two girls go into a pseudo-photobooth and giggle under the heading “Goddess of Friendship.”

From the world of art and photography, we bring a two-page feature and brief interview with us here at Photobooth.net in the internationally-distributed magazine ISM: A Community Project. The piece, called Photobooths: The Art of the Self Portrait. It’s a nice piece, and it’s a great magazine, available at select newsstands or on ISM’s site now; we encourage you to pick up a copy.

And finally, another old photo with with what must be a great story behind it. At the risk of starting up a “Photomatic of the Week” feature, I thought I’d post this eBay gem, because it’s a great photo and a little unusual.



Not only does this Photomatic feature the great “Souvenir of the Nation’s Capital” backing, but the young soldier in the photo is sitting behind a prop with the body of what looks like the cherubic new year of 1941 painted on it, which makes for a great image. Written on the photo itself and mostly faded at this point is the question “Guess Who?”, and on the reverse is written the date “January 13, 42.” This date doesn’t make much sense with the New Year 1941 image, but it’s still a great photo.

The history of the Photomatic will be the subject of another investigation at some point in the future, but I wanted to put up some images from some of the terrific Photomatic photos I’ve come across on eBay lately. These single-shot photobooths were found in railroad stations, nightclubs, and restaurants around the country, and many featured custom-designed backings that identified where the photo was taken.


This photo was taken at San Francisco’s Bal Tabarin nightclub, and instead of the traditional blanks on the back showing “Date” and “Place Taken,” this photo purports to show a member of the Bal Tabarin “Rogues Gallery,” and asks for “Date Entered” and “Behavior” to be filled in, though neither is on this particular photo. Some brief research turns up some information about Bal Tabarin, including this particularly helpful roundup of notes about the place. Check out this terrific amateur film from 1940 in the GLBT Historical Society collection for a brief glimpse of the exterior of this “Aristocrat of San Francisco Theater-Restaurants.” More Photomatics to come…

Photobooth photos appear by the dozens on eBay every day, and sell for anywhere from 99¢ to $50, depending on their condition, subject matter, and provenance. After watching photobooth photo sales over the last few years, we’ve jumped in, tentatively, on a few occasions, and have found a few gems.

This miniature album, which is positively tiny (the photos are 1 1/2″ by 1 7/8″), has room for ten photos, and came to me with seven photos, all of the same young soldier, inside. I’ve never seen anything like it, with its transparent color cover and plastic ring binding. I’ll be posting some other eBay finds as they come.

We’re continually struggling against the tide of New Yorkers here at Photobooth.net West, never quite reaching that magic place where we’re ready for the newest issue when it comes, so it took until this week to make it to the December 24 & 31, 2007, issue. The Books article, titled “Visual Trophies,” by John Updike, focuses on the history of snapshots in America, which he describes through a review of the book The Art of the American Snapshot 1888–1978, the catalog for an exhibition of the same name at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.



It’s an interesting piece, and the exhibition and catalog sound intriguing for anyone with an interest in the history of photography as told through amateur, vernacular, anonymous photos. Somewhat strangely, though wonderfully, the article is illustrated with a half-page photo of a beautiful old photobooth, photographed by Harvey Stein, with a woman’s bare legs visible where the curtain should be. Below the large photo are five smaller portraits: four photobooth photos and one photo which might typically be called a snapshot. While we were excited to see photobooths so prominently featured, the article has precious little to do with photobooths at all, and we were left wanting a little more. 

Updike follows the history of the snapshot as it is laid out in the book, and when dealing with writer Sarah Kennel’s section on 1920–1939 (titled “Quick, Casual, Modern”), he describes the way the easy-to-use cameras that were becoming commonplace at this time made all sorts of photos possible:

A number of somewhat racy exposures hint at the camera’s significant role as a de-inhibitor, an enabler of what Kennel calls “home-grown pornography.” Nudes in provocative poses were among the earliest fruits of big-box, slow-tech photography in the mid-nineteenth century; something about the camera’s impassive appropriation of whatever is set before it invites, like a psychoanalyst’s silence, self-exposure.

He then quotes from Nakki Goranin’s upcoming book American Photobooth, in which she describes the way photobooth users were “stripping off their clothes for the private photobooth camera.” This is, obviously, an important observation and an interesting indicator of the power of the photobooth and the sense of privacy it gave to those who used it, but by bringing up this passage as evidence of the way the simple new cameras liberated amateur photographers, Updike glosses over the fundamental differences between a photobooth and a camera used by a typical consumer at the time. A photobooth creates no negatives, and those women taking off their clothes and couples getting adventuresome in the booth were safe so long as the curtain stayed closed. Once their photos came out of the booth, they had all of the evidence, but for amateur shutterbugs who wanted to get a little racy, there was still the shame of sending the photos away to be processed by Kodak or dealing with the knowing glances of a drugstore photo counter employee. For an entire article about amateur photography, it seems odd to base a point around the way photobooth photography works, as well as to illustrate the piece with photobooth photos. Photobooth photography sits somewhere between amateur photography, studio photography, and automation, and it seems that the distinction between snapshots and photobooth photos still needs to be made a little more clearly. 

Photos: Top © Harvey Stein. Bottom 1, 4, and 5: Nakki Goranin; 2 J.F.K. Library; 3 Collection of Robert E. Jackson.

The eighty-year history of the photobooth is filled with little detours and fascinating stories; one of those that has just come to our attention recently is the history of the Phototeria.

Thanks to photography historian George Dunbar, we can now learn about the story of David McCowan and his Phototeria, a late 1920s photobooth that placed a single photograph onto a photosensitive metallic disk. Dunbar tells the story in his article “The Phototeria — A Canadian Invention” in the most recent issue of Photographic Canadiana, the journal of The Photographic Historical Society of Canada.

Thanks to George for letting us know about his article, and for his permission to post the PDF on Photobooth.net and let our readers learn about it.

Phototeria photo by George Dunbar