With the extra time on our hands lately, we’ve had the chance to catch up on some backlogged to-do items, from back-end fixes to new content. Hopefully our readers won’t notice much of the behind-the-scenes work, but we can say that the blog archives, more than 450 entries stretching back 15 years, are now fully browsable again, by year, month, and category, to give a few ways of digging in.

Next up, new locations, from around the world:

We start with two new booths in public, outdoor locations in Prague. We’ve always felt like Prague could be a good photobooth town, and we’re happy to see two more booths, at the National Theater and at the National Gallery, added to the tally there. Thanks, Petr!

Next, a new home for an existing booth in Zürich, Switzerland.

When I visited Patrick in April, 2019, he was already planning the move, and awaiting the official go-ahead, which finally came and allowed him to move the booth where he and I took a strip outside Kosmos to another, more prime location outside Kanzlei Club.

Thanks to Michelle for contributing the photos for this new location.

I don’t know if I noted it between my visits to Lausanne in April and Berlin in August, but we learned that the booth on Goldbrunnenstraße in Zürich, operated by the machine’s inventor, Martin Balke—which for my money made the best photobooth photos I’ve ever taken—was taken out of service when Martin moved out of his apartment this summer. While we’re very glad to know about Patrick’s two booths in Zürich, we can’t help but mourn the loss the last remaining horizontal strip Swiss machine in Switzerland. The machines live on in Berlin, so visit them while you can!

Now, on to the pictures… We’re always coming across new films, with the grand total on our site now up to 226 different films spanning nearly a hundred years of cinema. This time, a few more recent additions.

First, thanks to our long-time contributor Charles, we have the first Chuck Norris film added to the list, a real cause for celebration. Code of Silence features a brief shot of a booth in Chicago’s Union Station. A few years later, the film’s director, Andrew Davis, would employ a photobooth in a much more integral way in The Fugitive.

Also thanks to Charles, we’ve added the 1975 exploitation film Just the Two of Us (originally released in 1970 as The Dark Side of the Mirror), which features a lovely booth in the final shot of the film.

We also got around to posting a single photobooth frame in the credits of the delightful Paddington 2, highly recommended for the whole family if anyone’s looking for brilliant, escapist fun on many levels.



In Ron Howard’s 2019 documentary Pavarotti, about the legendary tenor Luciano Pavarotti, we see a brief shot of a few frames from a photostrip capturing Pavarotti and his first wife.

Thanks to Christian for the tip on a 1998 film, Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon, featuring Derek Jacobi as the painter Francis Bacon, which features two extended scenes shot from the perspective of the photobooth camera.



The 2017 Morrissey biopic England is Mine includes a few photobooth photos in a scene in a Manchester record store where young Stephen awaits an answer to the “musician wanted” advert he’s posted there.

And now to the very recent: the Pixar release Onward joins Up in the “photobooth in a Pixar film” club.

Moving on to photobooths in music, we have a few albums to report, and a lot of songs. First, a 2016 album by the Fruit Bats called “Absolute Loser.“



And next, a 1987 album by Tom Verlaine, with a lovely color photobooth photo as the cover, Flash Light.



This past week, we added 33 songs with photobooths in the lyrics or title of the song. Rather than just list them all, I’ve created a mega-lyric featuring a line from each of the songs, which gives an idea of the way the image is used in these (mostly contemporary) songs. Perhaps the successor to my “Photobooths in Cinema” talk will be a three minute mashup of every photobooth-related lyric I can find. 

Click the lyric to visit the page for that song.

“The Photobooth Song”

Dive into a photobooth
Snap it for Japan, yeah oh
Duct tape you in my roof
Kiss you in the photo booth
Count it down, see the camera flash
Pick up all the photos and put in more cash
When we were chillin’
Smiling in the photo booth
I held the picture in my eye
From a photo booth near by
You’re not allowed to tell the truth
And the photo booth’s a liar
In the shrine
Found a photo booth
Black and white strip
From that photo booth
Nobody is hangin’ ’round makin’ out in the photo booth
Last Friday I see you in the photo booth
Makes my teeth hurt like airplane bathrooms
Photomaton soixante-dix-sept…
And photo booths she said
What she loves is sex in parked cars and the photo booth at Cha Cha
Take photos in the photo booth
The summer of my wasted youth
Dentro al Photobooth “Tre, due, uno: cheese” (click)
You felt that need to pile us all
Our smiles on call inside a tiny photo booth
Singing karaoke, killing Backstreet
Touching in the photo booth
Their surveillance state is not just a freakin‘ photo booth
That night we had our picture made
In a photo booth in town
And hope that the memories develop in the darkness
Like photos do, I wish I had a time-machine and a photo-booth
We took some pictures in a photo booth
Was it just you and her?
Did you go in the photo booth?
Snipers hiding in the photo booths
Gettin’ stuck with you in that photo booth
Photobooth, kissing youth, midnight bulletproof
Mein Spiegelbild zieht Fratzen, so wie Paare in der photo booth
Jeder-jeder wünscht sich so ‘n Beruf
We stuck that picture in a bottle
Sleeping silently in a photo booth
On the road where I caught a cab
And you thought that I’d leave you once I learned the truth
When we got lost as hell in that old photo booth
Pull the photo booth curtain
Check if the bar is open
Silver quarters in a photo booth
It printed little pictures of you
Get some change
Photos from a booth
Rifle range
And when the lights start flashing like a photobooth
And the stars exploding
We’ll be fireproof
a photobooth snapshot fading.
there ain’t too much left.
And screaming
High above the cities
Sings a lonely photobooth
(Gone in a flash)

From the outside, it looks like Photobooth.net has been dormant all summer and fall, but behind the scenes, we’ve received a pretty constant stream of updates from our dedicated readers out there, for which we are eternally grateful.

Since the last update six months ago, we’ve added no fewer than twenty new booth locations around the world, from the Pacific Northwest to Maryland and New York City, and from the South of France to Vienna and Amsterdam.

Thanks to all who contributed, and apologies to all for the somewhat longer than normal amount of time it took to get your contributions up on the site.

At right, we have photos of a number of booths new to the site. Click the links in the post or the photos to check out some of the entries.

We’re looking forward to another year of photobooth news and notes, and we’ve got some changes and updates planned for 2016. Happy new year!

Thanks to each of the following folks for taking the time to document and send in info on these far-flung booths, and on to the updates:

From Sam in Portland, Oregon: The Knock Back

Molly and Logan:
Adventures Underground, Richland, WA

Luke Lowe:
Sportland Arcade II, Ocean City, MD
Fun City I, Ocean City, MD
Fun City Arcade II, Ocean City, MD

Stephanie Yung: El Vez, New York, NY

Lova, with a host of French locations:
Le Dome du Marais, Paris
Magasin de jouets, Arles
La grande halle, Arles
Le lieu unique, Nantes

Vince Dressel:
Palais de Tokyo II, Paris
Wanderlust, Paris

Stefan Köll:
The Hoxton Hotel, Amsterdam

Dirk:
Achtung! Baby, the Hague

Jen:
Beyond Retro, Brighton, England

Claudia:
Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna
MuseumsQuartier Wien, Vienna
Generali Center, Vienna
25 Hours Hotel, Vienna

Matteo Sani:
Associazione Culturale Neibar in Venturina, Italy 

Christophe:
Brandy Melville, Brussels

As we get back into the swing of things, we’ll start with a quick trip back to the biggest event of 2014, the International Photobooth Convention in Chicago. In addition to our own recap of the weekend’s festivities, we had some great recaps from Matt at Photo-Matica, Tony DeFrank (who came all the way out from California), and an amazingly detailed and thoughtful wrap-up from Meags Fitzgerald. Thanks, everyone!

Since the convention, we’ve had an incredible list of new booth locations to add to the site, from six countries on three continents. I can’t remember the last time we had such a varied and interesting set of contributions. Thanks again to our readers for continuing to document these booths so faithfully.

We’ll start with a real surprise, our first ever photobooth located on the continent of Africa! Thanks to a conversation we had at the convention, Steph sent me photos and info about the booth, located in the center of Kampala, Uganda, which she had visited in 2007. We’re not certain it’s still there, but either way, we’re happy to have the booth listed in our directory.

In other news of new booths, we heard from Alexander Spevak, who let us know about the first booth we have listed in the Czech Republic. The black and white booth is located at the Kino Světozor, and a strip will set you back 50 koruna.

And just this week, thanks to an email from Stefan of Photoautomat Amsterdam, we’re elated to be able to add a photochemical photobooth location along the Herengracht canal in lovely Amsterdam. The booth is located at the Lomography Store, and takes euro coins and custom tokens — nice!

Our thanks go out as well to Matteo of Fotoautomatica, who has informed us of a new black and white booth location at Borgo Burger in Livorno, Italy, bringing their total to five machines around the country.

Swinging back across the Atlantic, we have a new location in Canada, doing its part to turn the tide of booth closures across the country, a black and white booth at the Cobalt Motor Hotel in Vancouver.

And finally, a few new locations in the U.S. First, thanks to Connie Begg for sending us info and photos about the booth at Heebe Jeebe in Petaluma, California, right before the convention. 

Tony let us know about a photobooth at Big Fun in Columbus, Ohio, which follows along in the Big Fun tradition of very nearly burying their photobooths amongst the products available for sale. 

We’d also like to thank Ruthie for sending in a photo and scan from the booth at the new Ace Hotel Los Angeles, which continues the Ace tradition of a “booth in (nearly) every hotel.”

As it turns out, the booth at the Ace L.A. is actually the machine that used to be located at their Portland outpost; can anyone confirm that the Ace Portland has another booth, or has it become a booth-less Ace?

Staying in Portland, we’d like to finally thank our convention buddy Kory for contributing photos and info from a black and white booth at Dot’s Cafe, with its lovely polka dot back curtain. 

And finally, thanks to Nathan for letting us know about the black and white booth at Montana, a bar in Seattle. Especially in busy photobooth cities like Portland and Seattle, locations are always coming and going, so we rely on our readers to keep us posted. Thanks again, everyone, and keep the emails coming! We’ll be back next week with another update recap from the summer. 

Fall is in the air, and it’s time to return after our post-convention vacation. Over the past few months, we’ve been chipping steadily away at the big to-do list of contributions, updates, and news from our readers around the world, and we’ve got more in the pipeline. 

Later this week, we’ll have a post gathering together all of the new additions we’ve made to the site since June, but for now, I’ll leave everyone with a shot of Milton Berle coughing in a photobooth mirror, from an ad for Vicks Forumula 44 cough medicine (hat tip to @classicshowbiz and Charles for the link).

We are very excited to announce that the 2014 International Photobooth Convention will be held at A&A Studios Chicago, June 6–8, 2014. Organized by our longtime friend and collaborator (and designer of the convention announcement) Meags Fitzgerald, yours truly Tim and Brian, and Anthony Vizzari of A&A Studios and host of the 2009 Convention in Chicago, the event will bring together photobooth enthusiasts, artists, experts, and the generally curious for a weekend of experimentation, collaborative projects, talks, screenings, and a book launch. 

Visit the convention page and RSVP for the event on Facebook.

More details to come in 2014. We look forward to seeing you all there!

Apologies all around for the recent dormant spell here on the blog. My photobooth focus lately has been on figuring out how to get my own Model 14 photobooth out of the shed and across the country, rather than the larger photobooth world. During the last month, I’ve finished working at my job in Los Angeles and will be heading to Connecticut to start a new job. Photobooth.net West will become Photobooth.net East again, just as I was when this site started almost ten years ago. 

I have a few little additions that have arrived in the last few months to present today, but I haven’t sought out much news, and will continue to be occupied with other things over the next month or so. Needless to say, after a perhaps slightly fallow year for the site in 2013, it looks like 2014 is going to be another busy one here at Photobooth.net. Stay tuned, and we’ll keep you posted.

First, our friend Scot at the Massilon Museum in Ohio sent us a short promo video for their upcoming Warhol exhibition, complete with their lovely black and white photobooth for museum goers to take photos in. 

Next, thanks to Tony for sending us an account of his Portland Photobooth Hunt. It was great to read about his travels around Portland, searching for and using photobooths, using our site as a guide. It reminded me of my Chicago Photobooth Marathon a few years back, though his was a good deal more successful than mine. 

Thanks to Marco for sending in photos from a new photobooth location, the Hoxton Hotel in London. The booth, an Auto-Photo Canada machine, looks right at home. We appreciate the excellent sample photo Marco sent, as well. Slowly but surely, London is returning to the map in terms of photochemical machines, which we’re very happy to see. And speaking of London booths, Time Out London published a guide to black and white photobooths in London. Thanks to Sophie for the tip.

We also heard from our friend Jan Wenzel recently, who let us know about his new solo show at the Klaus Kleinschmidt Gallery in Wiesbaden, Germany. These new pieces were created in a black and white booth, which is a bit of a departure for Jan.

Jan’s show is currently open, and will run through September 20. If anyone goes to see it, we’d love to hear what you think.

Tynjanow | Zwölf Porträts (2012) 8 Automatenstreifen
Diptychon als Unikat (Schwarzweiß)
je 42,0 x 62,0 cm (Rahmen)
Verso Signet + Stempel

I’ve been keeping my eyes peeled for photobooths in cinema for ten years now, and most sequences I’ve come across focus on the photobooth, or at least feature the booth prominently. Carnival of Souls is a film of a different sort, in many ways. It’s a terrifically moody, evocative, singular film (check out the excellent Criterion release on DVD), and for our interest, wins the award for most oblique, obscure photobooth appearance in a film. In one brief shot that lasts just a few seconds, one edge of the end of a photobooth can be seen behind a Williams Titan shooting game. I thought I spotted something when I saw the film screened, and confirmed my suspicions with the DVD.

From the sign on the end of the booth that reads “Take your own miniature portraits / Photos in 2 1/2 minutes,” the “N” of “OWN,” the “S” of “PORTRAITS,” and the “S” of “MINUTES” are barely visible. If you look even more closely, you can see the drying slot at the right edge of the booth.

Paul Fejos’ 1928 (mostly) silent masterpiece Lonesome is an important film in the history of American cinema, but it’s downright seminal in the story of the photobooth, as it has the earliest known example of a photobooth appearing in a film. Thanks to a new Criterion Blu-ray release, we can upgrade the images on the site. Roll over the new image to see the improvement from the old: better image quality, more detail, and the correct aspect ratio. 

It’s been a busy year for the photobooth. As 2012 comes to a close, we’re taking a look at what the last twelve months have brought in the the world of the venerable photochemical machine, now in its tenth decade of life.

Most notably, this was the year that audiences around Europe got to see the most comprehensive and significant exhibition on the history and art of the photobooth ever produced. Curated by Clément Chéroux, Sam Stourdzé, and Anne Lacoste at the Museé de l’Elysee in Lausanne, the exhibition was titled “Derrière le rideau: L’esthétique du photomaton,” or “Behind the Curtain: The Aesthetics of the Photobooth.” I was honored to be able to contribute to both the printed catalog and the exhibition itself, and I traveled to Lausanne for the opening in February. After Lausanne, the show traveled to Le Botanique in Brussels and then to Vienna, where it remains open for another two weeks at the Kunst Haus Wien.

Back in the U.S., another international photobooth event was on the horizon. Three years after our very successful event in Chicago we hosted another International Photobooth Convention. This time, we gathered two photochemical photobooths and a major collection of world-class photobooth art in the sunny confines of Venice, California, and enjoyed two nights and a day of photobooth fun. Read all about it here.

The 2012 Photobooth Convention led to our first official publication, a 25th Anniversary Catalog celebrating the past and present work of the pioneering photobooth artists who first displayed their art in Rochester, New York in 1987. Limited copies of the catalog are still available for purchase; you can order them here, along with signed and numbered copies of the beautiful poster for the show.

We finished up the convention with a terrifically fun photobooth crawl in a hired van around Los Angeles. 

As we do with every convention, we produced a collaborative project with those who attended. This time, it was a collection of Photobooth Shorts, movies told in just four photobooth frames. We still have a limited quantity of numbered copies left for sale; follow the link to get your copy.

On the site itself, we’ve had a busy year of updates. We continue to discover new photobooth locations ourselves, and learn about them from contributors all over the world. In 2012, we added 48 new photobooth locations, plus countless additions, corrections, and updates to other locations already in our directory.

2012 also proved that the photobooth craze in movies, TV, and print shows no sign of slowing. This year, we’ve added 24 new movies, 22 new albums, 21 new TV shows, 15 new magazine articles, 14 new commercials, 10 new music videos, and six new newspaper articles.

The year also saw 30 entries in our blog, from Jack White’s appearance on ‘American Pickers’ to more recent omnibus recaps of additions to our various collections of photobooth appearances around the world. 2012 also brought our first ever guest blog entry, a travelogue from Meags Fitzgerald about her epic European photobooth adventures. Visit our Archives to poke around the entries from the past year. 

If we can read anything into these stats and highlights, it’s that the photochemical photobooth is alive and well in 2012, thanks to the vibrant and committed community of enthusiasts around the world, many of whom we had the pleasure of meeting this year. 

Best Wishes from Photobooth.net for a joyous, peaceful, productive, and photobooth-filled 2013! (And Happy New Year from two of the youngest members of the Photobooth.net community, both booth enthusiasts in the making)

One more entry this week to shed some light on what we’ve been adding to the site lately, this time focusing on new photobooth locations. We only have a few to add, but each is noteworthy in its own way. 

First, we start with an old faithful, the booth at the Lakeside Lounge in New York. After the news broke in April that the Lakeside was closing, concern for the photobooth was second only to the grief about the bar itself. Thankfully, the owners found a new home for the booth, not too far away at the Hi-Fi Bar. The booth is a legend in the East Village, and we’re glad to see it’ll still be serving up great photos even after the sad demise of its former home.

Next, we’ve heard from Matteo that he’s installed another photochemical booth on the streets of Italy, this time on Via Squadroni in Reggio Emilia. Picturesque, indeed.

And finally, thanks to last month’s photobooth crawl, we finally had the opportunity to check out the booth at the Satellite here in Los Angeles. Now, it was in need of some attention and wasn’t turning out photos when the busload of photobooth lovers stopped by, but we trust it’s back in working order now, and I hope to visit again soon and take some photos.