Just a quick note for those of our readers who enjoy a little Facebook now and then: Photobooth.net now has a Facebook presence, a group where old-style photobooth enthusiasts can gather, share information, and keep up on what’s going on in the world of dip and dunk photobooths. Join the community, say hello, and look around. We’re just getting started, and welcome your input.
Photobooth.net is and always has been the work of two people, who, for all of our geographical separation, still can’t manage to cover the whole United States, much less the world, and though we make it a point to incorporate photobooth-hunting into pretty much any kind of travel plans we have, it’s a lost cause without the help of generous and helpful photobooth enthusiasts around the country and around the world.
From Utah to Berlin and Latvia to Portland, we’ve received invaluable contributions from people who have helped our listings grow to more than 250 entries around the world. Now, admittedly, we’re a little weak on the international side, but then again, so it seems are the booths themselves, and we’re pleased to have the listings that we do, proving that while endangered outside of North America, old-style photobooths are not yet extinct.
Contributions to Photobooth.net come in two forms: either a name and address of a booth location or the complete deal with booth photo and sample photostrip. For the time being, when we receive a contribution in the form of a tip about a location, we file it away in our ever-growing (though occasionally-shrinking) “To-Do List” of booths around the world, waiting for a time when someone contributes photographic proof, an occasion to visit the area ourselves and snap some photos, or the point in time (hopefully soon) when we revamp our photobooth listings. In addition to the current list of confirmed locations with photos, dates, and relevant information, we hope to list those unconfirmed locations contributed by others, mentioned in the press, or found on the web, in hopes that our readers will then visit them and make an official contribution — or, as the case may be, confirm for us that in fact, no photobooth at that location exists any longer.
Until that point, please take a look at our Guide to Contributing a Photobooth Location and keep on sending in those photos and scans!
As long as we’ve been running Photobooth.net, which is just about two and a half years now, we’ve been planning a section devoted to photobooths in music. It’s a natural corollary to our looks at movies, television, and printed media, and it’s a topic that is rife with fascinating examples. We’ve always had a sub-section devoted to music videos, but with the head start we had on the movies section and the photobooth directory from the predecessor to this site, we had more than enough to work with, and music went by the wayside.
Well, after much organizing, gathering, and stalling followed by working, we are pleased to present our latest effort, Photobooths in Music. The section is divided into three categories. The first is an expanded and updated look at Photobooths in Music Videos, from Madness and Elvis Costello to Jessica Simpson and Natasha Bedingfield, with a lot of interesting bands and musicians in between.
The second section takes a look at the use of photostrips, and to a lesser extent photobooths themselves, in album art, on the covers and in the liner notes of LPs, CDs, and other recorded media. These run the gamut from well-known classics like Liz Phair’s Exile in Guyville to more obscure works like Electrelane’s single for “The Bells” and “Photolab 9000″ by the Swedes.
The final section examines the role of photobooths in song lyrics, ranging from a passing reference in a lyric to the title and subject of a song. From mega-bands like U2 to singer-songwriters like Elliott Smith, musicians have used the idea of the photobooth and the photos it produces to convey a host of different ideas and feelings. Bands like The Books and Death Cab for Cutie have even named songs after the photo-making machines; my new favorite is “Photobooth Curtain” by School for the Dead.
We’d like to thank everyone whose contributions have added immensely to our store of knowledge, and we’d also like to acknowledge and thank Mr. Mixup, who will be curating the Music section along with us, as we owe many of the items in this new section to his years of research and collecting.
We know that what we have is by no means definitive, and we hope the launch of this new section will spur a thousand contributions from readers to help us make it more complete. With that, please, enjoy Photobooths in Music.
The first time I did this was nearly a year ago, but the random Google search is back, and today’s word is “custody.” The most interesting hit on the first page of results is the story of Graham Young, the St. Albans Poisoner, a man who poisoned more than 70 people in his life, three of them fatally, beginning when he was just 15. Young was seen to be a generally creepy young man, unnverving those around him before and after he was finally caught by the police:
Young clearly enjoyed conveying such a chilling impression. When the press asked for a picture of the defendant, he insisted they use one in which he looked particularly cold-eyed and sinister. As it happened, the glowering photograph actually came about by accident. Holden explains that Young was scowling because he thought he had been cheated out of some money by the coin-operated photo booth where the picture was taken.
Young’s story was the basis for a film called The Young Poisoner’s Handbook, which, incidentally, I saw in October of 1995, with the director, Ben Ross, in person at the Cambridge Arts Cinema in England. Fascinating, I’m sure. I wonder if the photobooth photo made an appearance in the film…
Every time we discover a new photobooth, another one seems to disappear. Sometimes this happens to the same booth, and today we present listings for two photobooths in the Los Angeles area that came and went before we even had a chance to notice. Ricky visited photobooths at a salon called Lucas Echo Park and at a nearby Rite Aid pharmacy in December; by the time I visited in March, they were both gone. Another one of Ricky’s submissions, the photobooth at Café 50s in Sherman Oaks, has also gone away, replaced by a digital booth.
While we’re happy to be an up-to-date guide for people looking for photobooths to visit as they travel the country, we also think it’s important to keep track of those dip and dunk photobooths that are no longer with us, or no longer where they once were. As we move into our third year of operation and get closer to a whopping 200 photobooths in our directory, look for some changes to the way we present our listings, making them easier to search and browse, and making it easier to tell which booths are still actually up and running.
A few photobooth-related projects and other additions to the site: first, we’ve mentioned the Photoboof project before, but we’d like to point out Alex’s photos of the inside of a great old Canadian black and white booth, one of four that was being re-covered for a corporate event. The photos document the inside, the outside, and the mechanical innards of the booth, and are worth a look inf you’ve never seen the chemical baths and spider mechanism.
Secondly, a recent exhibition at the Stockholm Moderna Museet featured the photographs of Carl Johan De Geer, a photographer, artist, and musician who made his own homemade photobooth in the 1960s that allowed viewers to photograph themselves. The resulting photos, more than 300 of which are now in the museum’s collection, depict the artist’s family and friends, as well as artists and musicians, both known and unknown.
And finally, the most interesting photobooth project of late, the John Wilkes Photo Booth. The name says it all; check it out for yourself.
Photo: John Wilkes Photo Booth schematic, boothshotme.com.
2007 should be a banner year for Photobooth.net, our second full year of existence, bringing new changes and additions to the site, as well as more coverage of the continuing saga of the world’s favorite somewhat instant, usually affordable, always unique moment-capturing contraption. We hope to bring news of another Photobooth Convention for 2007, as well as other interesting an exciting developments. For now, we’ll rattle off a few new additions that have come around in the last few weeks:
A recent project called The Photo-Silhouette Booth.
Films from the last twenty years with photobooth apperances including Mi Vida Loca, Lackawanna Blues, The Forgotten, Just Between Friends, and L’Auberge espagnole.
In the realm of television, recent additions include an episode of “The Simpsons,” an appearance in “Ugly Betty,” and two episodes of “One Tree Hill.” Forthcoming, a scene from this week’s episode of “My Name Is Earl.”
Let us know what you’d like to see in 2007, and keep your submissions, tips, and suggestions coming.
Last year, after reaching what I thought was the end of the line for appearances of photobooths in film documented or mentioned on the web, I started searching with other key words thrown in, so instead of continually searching for “photobooth movie,” I would search for “photobooth script,” or “photobooth scene,” or anything else that might bring me to another mention. Tim came up with the idea of just adding a random word to “photobooth” and seeing what came up as a way to find more obscure and hidden material out there, and I’ve decided to inaugurate this feature today. If it stinks, we’ll stop, but it seems like it might have potential.
I found a few random word generators out there, and chose to use one that creates nouns in particular, though I suppose any kind of word would work fine. The first candidate: plaster. And the first result: well, the first hit is for an entry in none other than this very blog, which brings me to some rules for this exercise: instead of taking the first hit, or even the second, I think it’s probably our prerogative to choose the most interesting of the the first few links rather than stick to any formula.
So, the first qualifying hit for “plaster” comes to us from a February 22, 2006 entry in The Washington Oculus, a blog by Michael Grass of the Washington Post. The entry tells of a recent visit he paid to New York City, where one of his souvenirs was “a strip of photobooth photos (at right), taken from inside a photobooth in someone’s apartment. Where can I get a nifty in-home photobooth?” A pretty solid hit for a first try, I’d say. I’d love to know whose in-home photobooth it is, and this begs a larger question: just how many personal in-home booths are out there (excluding Hollywood)? Having never seen one myself, I’m curious to know. Grass even provides a photo of his photostrip; nice, classic black and white. Oh, and the “plaster” in question came in numerous descriptions of the renovations to the home of the University of Michigan’s daily newspaper, in another entry on the same page. Stay tuned for the next entry and send in any suggestions you have for a better name for our new diversion.
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)
Thanks to a tip yesterday from Nate Woodard, we caught mention of our website on MyYahoo’s daily website picks. For a look at the screen capture, click here.
