I was a big “Weird Al” Yankovic fan when I was a kid, I have to say. The real beginnings of my awareness of popular music coincided nicely with the advent of the CD, so I didn’t have many store-bought tapes besides a “Straight Up” cassingle here and a “Cocktail” soundtrack there… But I owned a cassette of every “Weird Al” album I could get my hands on, even the ones that parodied songs I didn’t know. I loved them for the same reasons everyone else did: they were funny. They were smart, too, and kind of amazing, the way he could make his songs sound just like the ones he was mocking. He’s a wonderful sort of constant in the world; even when you’re not paying attention, he’s still out there, doing what he does best.
A chance hearing of “You’re Pitiful,” his parody of the ubiquitous James Blunt song, brought us to his website, where, in his Photo Gallery, we found no fewer than eleven different photobooth shots, some with two photos blended together, of Al from his childhood. The list of “Famous in the Photobooth” gets a little longer.
Photo: Photo booth fun #1, weirdal.com.
A new addition to the Photobooth.net Art section this week is 29 year-old Japanese artist Tomoko Sawada. Sawada is best known for her piece ID-400, a collection of 400 “single photo-booth images rephotographed, multiplied times four and arranged in squares, then fitted together in framed grids of 100 squares each, adding up to a regular rogue’s gallery of unprepossessing little women.” More can be found on Sawada and her work at the Zabriskie Gallery page for the show.
In addition, we’ve added a 2003 New York Times article to the In Print section. The article describes Sawada’s work, as well as Babbette Hines’ Photobooth book and the booth and show at the Griffin Museum in 2003.
As reported in ThisIsWiltshire.com, a man stopped in the manager’s office in a shopping center in Trowbridge, England, this week, to report that the photobooth was “on the blink,” only to spot a photograph of his mother, working in the woollen mill that once sat on the site of the Shires shopping center. Gwen Earle, now 92, began working in the mills at age 14, and after raising a family, retired at 62. The photograph, taken in 1976, was presented to Earle by the mall management. Even when they’re not working, photobooths exert a special power…
Photo-London, billed as “London’s first international photography fair,” opens next week, offering thousands of photographs for sale to the public. A preview of the show from the Times of London describes the breadth of the show, and includes a mention of the works of “lesser-known young photographers such as Jan Wenzel, a German artist based in Leipzig, who creates his pictures in an old passport photo-booth.”
A quick search revealed this bio of Wenzel, mentioning his “künstlerischen Arbeit allein dem Paßbildautomaten,” and another hit led to story called “Pass-Bilder: Die Fotofixkunst von Jan Wenzel,” an informative piece that also links to his recent book, Fotofix (or Fofofix, as Amazon calls it…)
I’ve never heard of Wenzel’s work before, and from the photos and descriptions I see, it looks fascinating and different than anything else I’ve seen. Time to add him to our Art section.
Photo: Jan Wenzel, “Interieur #3
A few months ago we made note of the photobooth that makes an appearance in the new “Sims 2” game. Thanks to the wonder of YouTube, now we’ve got a video of the photobooth in action. I won’t hazard a guess as to what exactly is going on in the booth, but it’s nice to see what it looks like in the “real” world.
According to another screen capture, this one on Flickr, you can “take photos of your sims and then save them in your sim’s inventory or place them in their homes,” an example of which you can see on the wall of the Sims in the image. It’s a two-by-two grid rather than a strip of four, but I suppose it’s too much to expect a photobooth in a digital world to be a dip-and-dunk model…
Today’s New York Times brings us the story of Jacques Vidal, an artist who is organizing what he calls a “surrealist county fair” in the Metro Mall in Middle VIllage, Queens. The fair, which takes place April 1, will feature a “chewing gum brain,” erupting volcanoes a la the second grade, and posters and sculptures, all in an “absurd space where all is equal.”
He later said, “The final product will be among the most confusing and jarring public art events in recent memory placed in the context of a forgotten Queens relic.” The exhibit will take place at a food court where all but one restaurant has closed. A partly lighted sign advertises Weight Watchers. Near a GNC and Sam Goody (“Store closing, entire store on sale!”), a cardboard Statue of Liberty beckons one past a storefront dentist to Liberty Tax. A photo booth waits. There is the sweet scent of Subway bread baking.
The story is illustrated with a photostrip of Vidal held in front his face, taken by James Estrin for the New York Times. We hope the organizers are aware of the power the photobooth held for the Surrealists; they can read all about it in this 2004 Guardian article.
Back in January, Photobooth.net was contacted by a BBC reporter for information about the history of the photobooth for the program (or should we say ‘programme’) You and Yours. I went into the lovely studios of WXXI here in Rochester, New York to do an interview with the reporter, Liza Booth, on January 23. It was a new experience for me, a trans-Atlantic digital link-up during which we chatted about photobooths, my interest, the website, and their history. Last Friday, March 24, the episode, called “The thriving face of photo booths,” finally aired.
The story, which runs nearly ten minutes, details the history of the photobooth, its current incarnations, and a few of the films in which photobooths have made appearances. Photobooth artist, collector, and Photobooth Convention founder Steve Howard, a.k.a. Mixup is featured, as well as “historian for Photobooth.net,” yours truly. You can either listen to the BBC’s Real Audio link or to our mp3: The thriving face of photo booths (1.7 mb mp3, 9:27)
This week’s Gothamist interview is with advice columnist Judy McGuire, who writes the Dategirl column in the Seattle Weekly. The accompanying photo of McGuire is a great black and white photobooth shot, perhaps taken at one of the many Seattle-area photobooth locations.
Babbette Hines strikes again, this time with dogs. In issue #33 of Bark Magazine, she contributes a number of dog photobooth pictures from her collection. Unfortunately the magazine is no longer on shelves, and we are still trying to track down a copy. If any one of you has this issue, we’d appreciate a scan.
Thanks to Monte and Angel for the tip!
While we’re not sure where to file it on Photobooth.net, it is also worth mentioning that Chronicle Books published postcard versions of some of the images from Babbette’s book.
International corporation Photo-Me is back in the news this week, this time with some good news: they’ve sealed a deal with the Post Office in the UK. The deal, worth £5m, calls for Photo-Me to supply “digital media kiosks for the self-service printing of photographs” to post offices around the UK. A newratings.com article on the same subject states that the move “sees the company regain most of the UK markets share lost to Snap Digital,” the company’s primary competitor.
