We’ve just covered the appearance of Jack White on “American Pickers” as he said goodbye to the booth used in the video for the song “Hang You from the Heavens” by his band The Dead Weather. One of the other members of The Dead Weather is Allison Mosshart, who’s best known for her work in her band The Kills. She obviously shares an affinity for photobooths with White, as she and Jamie Hince have used photobooth pictures on at least three of The Kills’ releases: “Keep on Your Mean Side,” “Fried My Little Brains” and “No Wow.”

In an interesting confluence of events, just a few days after the Dead Weather booth appeared on television, The Kills have released a video for their new single, “Last Goodbye,” set in a photobooth. Actress and director Samantha Morton directed the video, and spoke about the video for Nowness:

After being sent a live performance of the track, Morton prepared a treatment referencing an Allen Ginsberg book, the works of Robbie Miller, Jack Clayton’s The Innocents, and photo booths. “I miss the quality of a ‘real’ photo booth—nowadays everything is so cheap and quick,” says the star of such films as Minority Report and Control. “The track felt incredibly nostalgic; the same way I feel about the machines.” Unbeknown to Morton, the photo booth is central to band members Alison Mosshart and Jamie Hince’s ten-year partnership: the pair seek out the devices when on tour to record their travels. But Morton managed to renew the experience: “Samantha has this crazy way of inviting you into a fantasy world where you don’t feel stupid or awkward,” he says. “She had dramatic classical music that she’d play instead of our track. It made you perform completely differently. There’s a beauty and magic in it that I could never have imagined.” Here Morton reveals her nostalgia for photo booths and love of monochrome.

Where did the photo booth idea come from?

I liked photo booths and I missed them. I love the fact that when you used to go to a photo booth, sometimes you used to have wait a good 20 minutes. Sometimes, I remember, if they were really crap, you’d have to wait forever. You’d go off for a cup of tea and you’d come back to get your passport pictures. Also, it was quite expensive when we were young. It was a real treat. Now, it’s still expensive, but you just get these horrible images of yourself that won’t last in the same way. The song was incredibly nostalgic and I think that made me feel nostalgic.

Watch the video and see the “real” photobooth for yourself.

Just as I wrap up some work on “Photobooths in Cinema” for the upcoming show in Lausanne next month, I heard today from a friend about yet another 1928/1929 silent/sound film that seems to feature a photobooth. 

As you may remember, the two earliest films we’ve yet found that feature a photobooth are Pal Fejos’ Lonesome (opened in New York September 30, 1928 and released January 20, 1929), a silent released with added talking sequences shortly after its original release, and Welcome, Danger (released October 12, 1929), originally made as a silent film and then re-edited with added footage as Harold Lloyd’s first talking picture. 

Today, we learned of a third film, The Shopworn Angel, which opened in New York after Lonesome, on December 29, 1928, but was released in theaters a week before Lonesome, on January 12, 1929. The film is mostly silent but was released with two talking sequences, and stars Gary Cooper and Nancy Carroll. It’s also not to be confused with the 1938 remake of the same name, starring Jimmy Stewart. 

So far, the only evidence of the photobooth is this lovely photograph, a cropped version of a photo found on the What About Bobbed? Tumblr (where we were directed by our helpful tipster) as well as the Gary Cooper Scrapbook. In the still, we see the booth, complete with not-quite-full front wall, adjustable stool, and flash bulb visible, as Gary Cooper and Nancy Carroll look admiringly at a photograph taken in the machine. I hope to see the film at some point, and see if this scene shows up, to add more to the story of the photobooth in its early days. Thanks to Nancy for the tip!

Tune into the History Channel on Monday, January 9 to see what happens when Mike Wolfe and Frank Fritz (otherwise known as the American Pickers) pay a visit to Jack White and Third Man Records (seen above, with not one but two photobooths). According to this piece on Paste.com, the guys try to tempt Jack with a taxidermy elephant head, in exchange for the photobooth used in the Hang You from the Heavens video he made with his band, The Dead Weather.

Watch a preview for the episode on the Third Man YouTube Channel.

UPDATE: You can watch the episode on the History Channel website here.

It’s been a busy few months here at Photobooth.net West, so we’ve got a big backlog of additions to the site to present today. 

First, we have listings for three new photobooth locations in New York City:

• The Glasslands Gallery, 289 Kent Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11211

• Vlada Bar, 331 West 51st Street, New York, NY 10019

• Blackout Bar, 916 Manhattan Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11222

Next, Nancy Pochis Bank, whom we’ve listed in our Art section, let us know about a new piece of photobooth-based work she’s done, seen here:

Jack Watts, a photography student in the U.K., has sent us a project in which he sought to break all of the rules for passport photos taken in photobooths. We’ve posted the project in our Projects section, and include the photos below.

Les Matons let us know about a video on Dailymotion that captures photobooth portraits taken by a student in Marseille between 1997 and 2001, strung together in sequence to show the changes in her appearance. Check out the video here.

Thanks to everyone for their contributions. 2012 is going to be an exciting year for the photobooth, and we look forward to bringing you more news, projects, and shows from around the world. 

The new year is nearly upon us, and it’s just two months to go until the opening of photobooth exhibition at the Musée de l’Elysee in Lausanne, Switzerland. We mentioned the show here back in September, and in the intervening months, we’ve been working on our contribution to the exhibition, and hearing from others in the community about the show. If you’re a fan of the history and art of the photobooth, it’s safe to say that it would be a good idea to find a way to make it to Switzerland between February and May of next year.

From the museum’s website:

When the first photobooths were set up in Paris in 1928, the Surrealists used them heavily and compulsively. Within minutes, and for a small price, the machine offered them, in the field of portraiture, an experience similar to automatic writing. Since then, generations of artists have been fascinated by the photobooth concept. From Andy Warhol to Arnulf Rainer, Thomas Ruff, Cindy Sherman and Gillian Wearing, many used it to play with their identity, tell stories, or simply create worlds.

The show includes over 300 exhibits and brings together different media — oil paintings, lithographs, edited films /videos and screenings — revealing the extent of the influence of the photobooth within the artistic community.

I’ll be attending the opening, and I look forward to meeting some of the other artists, historians, and enthusiasts who will be in attendance, as well as old friends from the community who will be making the trip from the U.S. and elsewhere in Europe. We will report back on the show for those who aren’t able to make it. Let us know if you’re coming and we’ll make a point of meeting up in snowy Lausanne.

We’re sorry to be a little late on this, but if you’re in Paris, you’ve still got one more day to catch it: the Photo-Off Festival is taking place in Paris, and Marc Bellini has a series of photobooth photos on display.

The event is a collaboration with La Joyeuse de Photographie, who provided the photobooth, and La Bellevilloise.

Barbara Kent, one of the last living silent film stars, passed away last week at the age of 103. She starred in films directed by William Wyler and Leo McCarey, and acted alongside such screen legends as Greta Garbo, Edward G. Robinson, and Harold Lloyd. One of her lesser-known claims to fame is the fact that she starred in two of the very first films to feature a photobooth, Lonesome (1928) and Welcome Danger (1929).

In both films, the machine takes a single photo which it returns in a small circular frame; in the case of Welcome Danger, the machine isn’t even really a booth, but still features the same technology and returns the same end product. Of course, the film is a Harold Lloyd comedy, so something manages to go wrong in the process…

The contributions seem to be flowing rapidly these days, and this week, we’ve got a varied assortment of new material to call your attention to.

First, a few additions to the otherwise neglected Music section. A Spanish band known as Parking Radio has released an album called Photomaton, with a song titled El Photomaton.

And thanks to a tip from Charles, we’ve added the Biz Markie classic “Just a Friend,” with its lyric, “Come to the picture booth/ So I can ask you some questions to see if you’re hundred proof.”

We’ve finally put a few more TV shows from Europe on the site, contributions we received awhile back but have only now managed to gather and present. First, thanks to Caitlin for telling us about a scene from the UK show Primeval:

And second, we’ve added a page for the European news show Metropolis. We mentioned the show a few months ago, and now have a permanent home for it in our TV section.

We also added another gem of a find from Les Matons: an Italian crime film called Escape from Death Row, a Lee Van Cleef vehicle with a great photobooth murder sequence.

Our In Print section has a few new additions as well. First, thanks to Siobhan for sending us scans from the magazine Oh Comely, which featured an interview with the owner of the only photochemical photobooth in Ireland.

Thanks to Kerstin for tipping us off to a new German photography book titled Photomaton: Frauen Männer Kinder, a collection of 500 photobooth photos taken between 1938 and 1945.

And finally, we’ve heard from Ginny Lloyd, the artist behind A Day at the Races, who has a new photobooth project for which she’s accepting contributions. Here are her instructions:

If you want to participate in the next photobooth book, mail in four photobooth style photos with dialogue bubbles documenting a photobooth performance by November 30th, 2011 to: PhotoBooth Book, PO Box 1424, Jupiter, FL 33468.

For quality control, no electronic submissions please — original photobooth or photobooth like photos only — no copies! No returns. Future exhibitions to be announced to participants. Be sure to use the prescribed format: photobooth style image size and include dialog bubbles.

Steps for submission:

1. Take/make 4 photos of your photobooth performance.

2. Put this in an envelope — do not email.

3. On a piece of paper draw dialogue bubbles for talk, think and/or holler. Make sure you indicate which bubble goes with each photo.

4. Clearly print your text in the bubble(s).

5. Add the paper to the envelope.

6. Mail envelope to PO Box 1424, Jupiter, Florida 33468 USA.

We’ve been cataloging and collecting appearances of photobooths and photostrips in cinema for more than eight years now. A few years back, we came across two films from very early on in the history of the photobooth (1928’s Lonesome and 1929’s Welcome, Danger), and we’ve got many films from the 1940s onward — with especially strong representation from the last decade or so. But until this week, the 1930s, the first full decade of the photobooth’s existence, has been missing from our list. 

I’ve always been certain that filmmakers in the 1930s would have been eager to feature the fashionable new invention in their films, but films of the 1930s aren’t the easiest to come across, and until now we hadn’t been able to find any examples of the photobooth in that decade.

I knew that The Long Night was a remake of Marcel Carné’s Le jour se lève, but I hadn’t had a chance to see if the photobooth strip in the later film had been inherited from the original. Indeed it was, and we’ve added Le jour se lève to our list.

Last month, we heard from Les Matons that a reference was made to Maurice Tourneur’s film Samson on the French Wikipedia page for Photomaton, and after some searching, we came across a copy of the film. A beautiful, massive Photomaton makes a few appearances during an early party scene in the film, overseen by a well-dressed young attendant.

Our week of updates continues with a slew of new TV shows with photobooths and photostrips in them. Most are from the last few years, and they come from the United States, Italy, and the U.K.

First, thanks to Marco for a tip about an Italian series called Romanzo Criminale. A mobster picks up a drop from the underside of a photobooth stool.

Marco also let us know about a British show called  Misfits, in which a character who can rewind time and change what happens sees two versions of the same photostrip.

Next, I want to thank Xiao for tipping us off to a scene in Royal Pains in which Evan (Paulo Costanzo) proposes to Paige (Brooke D’Orsay) in a photobooth.

A recent episode of Zooey Deschanel’s new show New Girl had the cast at a wedding, which naturally featured a photobooth. Several lengthy scenes in the booth were augmented by a number of shots of authentic photostrips from the machine.

The short-lived show Better with You (which I only saw because it was showing on the plane) used a photostrip in a drying slot as a theme for its opening credits and between-scene transitions. 

A scene from a recent episode of Modern Family featured an incidental pair of photostrips next to a mirror in one scene.

A recent episode of Auction Hunters had the guys stumble across an old booth in a storage locker. Read on to see more photos and our thoughts on where the booth really came from. 

And finally, the brilliant Portlandia was almost obligated to feature a photobooth, considering Portland’s recent ascendancy into the upper echelons of photobooth cities in the U.S. They didn’t disappoint, with a booth visible in the lobby of the “Deuce Hotel” in one episode this season.

Thanks again to everyone for sending in your contributions. Keep ’em coming!