As we look back on everything that happened during last week’s International Photobooth Convention, we’ll be posting recaps of all of the events that took place, the people we met, and the experiences we had during the three days. It was an ambitious event, and we used the occasion to debut a few of our own contributions to the world of photobooth media. We’ll now be making those items, namely the convention poster and the Photomaton 25th anniversary catalog, available to the public.

Our poster is a beauty, designed by Jared Purrington and printed at Level Press in Los Angeles on French Paper. The poster is signed and numbered in a limited edition of 100. The poster is $20 plus postage and handling.

The poster will be shipped to you rolled in a sturdy tube. 

The catalog for the PHOTOMATON 25th Anniversary show is a professionally printed and bound 36-page work that combines original biographies and artwork from the original 1987 catalog, which is now quite scarce, with updated information and images on every artist who participated in the original show. The catalog is also in a limited edition of 100, and is $15 plus shipping and handling.

Choose US/Canada or International and then click the image to purchase the item. I’m happy to ship multiple copies of either or both items, but due to the fact that the poster will be shipped in a tube, we need to charge separate shipping costs for each type of item. Please  with any questions. If you’ve written me before to reserve an item, I have them set aside for you, but please click through the PayPal links to set up payment and provide me with your shipping address.

U.S. / Canada $28.00 USD International $35.00 USD

U.S. / Canada $18.00 USD International $20.00 USD

The Convention is over, but the memories will live on… Last night, a bus full of photobooth enthusiasts pulled up in front of Mohawk Bend in Echo Park after a four hour point-to-point tour of half a dozen L.A. area photobooths. We lingered on the leather seats while finishing off cheap beers, exchanging stories about faulty bill acceptors and shoeboxes full of photostrips. We told stories, showed off tattoos, and thought about the next convention. We’d had a raft of authentic L.A. moments — getting stuck in traffic in West Hollywood, spotting a celebrity in Silver Lake, and getting lost and having to back a forty-foot bus up a hill — and had also had our share of booths of all kinds: working, sort of working, and out of order. We met a lot of great people, we had a blast, and we even ran into a Photobooth.net fan, completely at random, who was so enthusiastic about the site that he seemed like he’d been planted there to boost our confidence.

We’ll have a full write-up on the convention soon, but the short version is this: a lot of really great people came together to celebrate the photobooth and had a good time taking photos, talking shop, making friends, and being creative. We have a lot of people to thank and stories to tell, and we’ll get to it all once we have a minute. 

It’s been a long day and a great opening night at the Convention. More news and photos tomorrow; needless to say, it’s been a huge success already. Great people, great photos, great art, and a lot of fun.

It’s Convention Week here in Los Angeles. I received the last three packages of art today (from New York, the UK, and France) and the last-minute preparations are underway. This is shaping up to be the most ambitious Photobooth Convention I’ve been involved in, with an international art show, attendees from at least four countries, a printed catalogue, a post-event chartered photobooth tour, screen printed posters, a ton of raffle prizes, even a DJ. It’s my hope that at least most of what we’re planning comes off, but the real goal of the convention is to get people together and share a good time in and around these machines we love. 

I’ve been heartened but not surprised by the helpfulness and enthusiasm the Photomaton artists have shown me, and their artwork, as it has slowly arrived over the last month, is really impressive. I hope people make the trip to come see the show; you’ll see things from private collections, pieces created just for this show, and other amazing works you’re never going to see anywhere else. Right now, outside the Musée de l’Elysée, I probably have the greatest collection of photobooth art in one place right now in my office. I can’t wait to put it up and on display for everyone to see.

We’re just over a week away from the beginning of the 2012 International Photobooth Convention, for which we’re making what can only be described as feverish preparations. The booths are lined up. The shirts are ready. The posters are ready. The art is arriving. The catalog is being printed. The raffle prizes are being gathered. And soon, people will be flying from Paris and Nottingham, from Chicago and St. Louis, to join us in Venice for a weekend of photobooth fun.

While I have a second before full-tilt convention mania hits, I wanted to post about a new location we learned of this week: following quickly on the heels of the news about the new booth at Netil House in London, Paul Walker at the legendary Fred Aldous shop in Manchester let us know about their beautiful Model 17, now installed and working in their shop. We’re excited to learn about a third photochemical machine in the UK, and we hope more will join these three pioneers.

London’s getting a new photobooth, thanks to the gang at Photoautomat. Check out their blog for all of the details on their opening, which will take place tomorrow, Thursday, May 3 at Netil House.

Well, so it’s not quite here, but it’s been designed, it’s beautiful, and it’s going to press this week. We have the talented Jared Purrington to thank for the awesome design (and our buddy Keith to thank for hooking us up with Jared), and L.A.‘s Level Press to thank for the screen printing. The posters will be for sale at the convention next month, and any left over will be available for sale through the website. It’s getting closer, folks…

My how time flies. The 2012 International Photobooth Convention is just a month away.

As the planning goes on behind the scenes, we’ve added a few events to the schedule. The Los Angeles Photobooth Crawl has been on the books for awhile, and on Sunday, I visited eight photobooth locations on a dry run for the event. It’s going to be a lot of fun. Last night, we actually closed registration for this post-convention event, which will happen on Sunday night, May 20. We’ve reached capacity at this point, but will be keeping a wait list, as people’s plans will undoubtedly change in the next month or so. Contact us if you’d like to get on the wait list.

Back by popular demand, Anthony Vizzari of A & A Studios in Chicago will be leading another workshop, in which convention-goers can learn “Alternative Processes in Photostrip Reproduction.” The workshop will be held on Saturday at 4:00 pm, and will focus on the hand reproduction of photobooth photographs. The workshop will be more of a lab than an instructional session, and experimentation will be encouraged. The workshop is limited to 15 participants, and has a $25 fee for materials. Sign up for the event by emailing me.

As part of the convention, we’re assembling what should be a terrific show of photobooth art. As we work on putting that together, we’ve spruced up some of the listings in our Art section. We’ve added a few photos of artists that were missing before, and added some new artists as well. 

We’ve also been working on other sections of the site. We’ve added what is just the third film we’ve found from that photobooth heyday decade, the 1950s. The film is Quicksand, a film noir starring Mickey Rooney (yes, noir Mickey Rooney) and Peter Lorre, who plays a man who runs an arcade on the pier, complete with a Photomatic booth. Thanks to Elisa for the tip.

A remarkable video clip made its way around the web last week showing a man in a nursing home coming to life after hearing some of his favorite music. The clip is from a documentary feature called Alive Inside, and we caught a glimpse of some photobooth photos in one scene.

In the realm of TV, we added scenes from a 1985 episode of the British talk show Wogan, in which guest Liz Rideal talks about her massive photobooth collage project, which is seen on stage. Thanks, Liz!

And finally, I’m a little embarrassed to admit it’s taken me this long, but I’ve finally added two new photobooth locations in my own backyard here in L.A. The Churchill in West Hollywood and Mohawk Bend in Echo Park both feature Photo-Me Model 21s that get a lot of use. We’re always glad to see new booth locations to help balance out the ones that disappear each month. Speaking of, the legendary Lakeside Lounge in New York is closing this month, and they’re looking for a new home for their beloved photobooth. Help keep this photobooth alive and well and in the East Village!

We’ve got lots of new additions to cover today, including a couple of interesting photobooth-related projects. First, a collaboration between two people on different continents whom we’ve gotten to know through the site, Katherine Griffiths in Australia and Dick Jewell in the U.K..

A few months back, Dick Jewell, the man behind the first published collection of found photobooth photos and a major contributor to the Musée de l’Elysée exhibition, contacted us to ask for some assistance on a project he was working on. He was working with Katherine Griffiths, a photobooth enthusiast and collector and one of our helpful, far-flung contributors in Australia, to animate a collection of photobooth photos of herself over nearly 40 years. We helped out where we could, and recently, they let us know that the project was complete. You can view the film, which features photos of Katherine taken between 1973 and 2011, on Vimeo here.

Talking about Katherine’s project is a good reason to mention her website as well. Her Photobooth Journal blog covers her thoughts on the booth, looks back at old photos of herself, and includes ruminations on all kinds of vintage photobooth photography. We recommend taking a look back through the archives when you get a chance, and we wish Katherine the best.

We also have a few new additions in the Movies and TV section: the 1997 film The Boxer starring Daniel Day-Lewis and a 2009 French thriller called Ne te retourne pas:

Thanks to Anthony for pointing out a Radio Télévision Suisse TV piece which follows French singer Hugues Aufray as he visits the Musée de l’Elysée exhibit. You can watch the video on RTS.ch here.

And just yesterday, the CBC aired a segment called Following the Photobooth Faithful, in which reporter Julia Caron interviews Meags Fitzgerald as well as Jeff Grostern of Auto-Photo Canada to talk about the current state of the photobooth in Canada. Give the piece a listen, it’s well worth it.

And, speaking of our faithful international location contributor Meags, we encourage everyone to check out her IndieGogo project: it’s called Photobooth Expedition, and one of its goals is to help make Meags’ trip to the 2012 International Photobooth Convention a reality. It’s less than two months away, folks: time to make plans! We hope to see you there.

As we settle back in from the Lausanne and Zurich trip and look forward to the 2012 Convention in less than three months, we’re also keeping up with new additions to the site from things we’ve spotted ourselves to the many contributions we receive from our readers every week. Thanks again, everyone, for getting in touch.

First, we’ll start with the moving image. We’ve known about a photostrip appearance in the short-lived Craig T. Nelson show “The District” since we started the site, but never had a chance to get proof. We did some trawling and finally came up with the images from an episode called “Rage.”

Just a few weeks ago, and honest-to-goodness photochemical machine showed up on “Saturday Night Live” when Zooey Deschanel, already an aficionado of the booth both personally and professionally, hosted the show. A sketch called “Bein’ Quirky with Zooey Deschanel” saw Deschanel playing Mary-Kate Olsen, and Abby Elliott playing Deschanel.

We also have new photobooth photo appearances from David Cross’s “The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret” and a documentary called Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soapbox.

After meeting brothers Russ and Greg Goeken in Lausanne, we’re now happy to be able to list their photobooths in our directory: Greg runs the booth at the Shangri-La in Austin, and Russ oversees the booth at the Congress Street Social Club in Savannah, Georgia. 

We’ve heard about some booths in Atlanta over the years, but never had any confirmation (jklax, I’m looking at you), so this booth marks the first booth in our listings from Georgia, and is certainly the only photochemical machine in Savannah. Here’s to many years of success for both booths in these great cities.

We have a number of new books listed, from books made in photobooths to books about photobooths to books that merely mention the machines. First, Paul Yates kindly sent us a copy of his new book, Privacy is a Myth. The book’s Blurb page describes it as “a monograph of Filmmaker Paul Yates’ 25 years of photobooth photography. From Surreal to Sexy, from Degenerate to Intimate–these photobooth strips reveal more about Yates’ personal life than one could imagine. Homeless at 15, already an artist, Yates struggled to find an outlet for his passions…the ubiquitous photobooth machine was his answer!”

Next, we have the photostrip-sized collection called Falten, Fächer by painter and photographer Hansjürg Buchmeier, who I was happy to have met in Lausanne and who is now listed in our Art section.

We added a couple of books with mentions of the booth this week as well: from James Marshall’s well-known “George and Martha” series, the book Tons of Fun features a “Clickopics” photobooth.

The English writer Zadie Smith’s On Beauty features a long, sad, “Baldy Man”-esque sequence in a London photobooth.

Once again, we need to thank Les Matons for more in their steady stream of contributions: this week, they tipped us off to a catalog from a 1985 show about identity photos that features many photobooth works: Identités.

Additionally, they clued us in to the French recording artist Kim, who has used photobooth photos on at least fifteen albums, singles, and E.P.s over the last two decades. We’ve listed as many as we could find (currently at fifteen) in our Music section, from this split single from 1994 to La cuisine selon certains principles from 2001. More information on Kim (born Kim Stanislas Giani in 1977) on his site and on French Wikipedia.