Amidst all of the news of Europe going completely digital, it seems one booth in Paris has either survived or made a comeback. One of the most frequent questions we get on our discussion board asks whether or not there are any more real photobooths in Paris, and it seems that a Flickr user has found one, at the Palais de Tokyo. It seems likely that the booth is there as part of an exhibition, and if it’s the current show, it’ll only be there until the beginning of 2008, so if you’re interested, head over and check out the great-looking old booth. 

Everyone’s got a photobooth proposal story, these days. People Magazine tells the story of Brian and Alli and the Dallas Morning News talks about romance at the state fair. Both stories feature a scan of the photostrip, catching the proposal in mid-moment.

And in other news, Billy Bob Thornton, who has himself proposed a few times, apparently owns a photobooth, which he mentions in an interview in the Times of London:

“It’s full-on,” he explains enthusiastically. “When people come over they get in the booth and have their picture taken. I even have a book now, and anybody who comes by the house has their picture put in the book — even repairmen.”

Welcome Gridskippers!

Two big-city publications have recently come out with their top photobooth picks, Time Out New York covering the Big Apple in their weekly guide in print and online, and Gridskipper highlighting Los Angeles with all of their online Google Map-mashuppy goodness. Gridskipper’s piece, to be more accurate, is actually Photobooth.net’s top photobooth picks in L.A., as editor Helen Jupiter was kind enough to solicit our thoughts on the matter. Rachel Sokol also asked us our take on New York booths for her Time Out piece, so we’re feeling loved again after getting ripped off in print (paragraphs 9 and 10 sound familiar?) and insulted for taking the paper to task for it last month. 

The Time Out piece, titled “Strip mining,” lists a dozen photobooths around the five boroughs, including a few digital booths but hitting the mainstays of the Manhattan/Brooklyn dip-and-dunk scene like Otto’s, Lakeside, Bubby’s, and the Bushwick Country Club. 

Last week, continuing its long-standing interest in photobooths, Gridskipper has adapted the Time Out New York piece into a booths and booze list that dumps the non-alcoholic locations and narrows the selection to places where you can pose with a drink in your hand, or on your head. 

Another California county fair, another motherlode of photobooths. Though it didn’t equal the 23-booth haul at the Orange County Fair, the Los Angeles County Fair had eleven old-style photobooths, both color and black and white, in two locations at the fair. We tried out three of the booths, which were a little cheaper, at $4 each. First, a black and white booth with black borders. Next, a black and white booth with white borders. And finally, a terrific color booth with black borders. By mid-afternoon, when we visited the group of seven booths in the arcade area, the booths were mobbed with fairgoers. Thanks to Lisa for the tip.

In a sad bit of news, we’ve received word that the photobooths that have long been a part of the Children’s Museum in Boston are longer a part of the newly renovated museum. These two booths were some of the first I visited and cataloged before Photobooth.net was even a glint in our eyes. Sample photos from those booths will live on in our About Us page. Thanks to Kristen for the tip.

So maybe we were a little premature in remarking about the photobooth/tattoo shop connection: looks like when push comes to shove, the photobooth’s got to go for L.A. Ink’s Kat Von D. According to a post on the Kat Von D Fanclub website, she’s selling her booth on eBay.

I know I know… It’s sad.. but I am re-doing the skate ramp in the front of the shop and it’s gonna take up too much room, SO! the photo booth must go.…

I’ll be sad to see it go, but hopefully someone rad who will love it will take good care of it too!

The booth sits just inside the door of the shop, and is decorated with posters of Kat and a giant Lisa Simpson sitting on top. I have yet to visit the shop when the booth is functioning, but here’s hoping I get a chance before the auction ends. 

Who knew photobooths and tattoos went so well together? As the first season of L.A. Ink hums along and we watch tattoo artist Kat Von D pose with her friends and customers in her photobooth, we have news of another photobooth connection coming up across the ocean in London. 

A Press Association report about a series of “urban landmarks; set up to promote Discovery’s new series London Ink mentions a photobooth sculpture:

A new urban landmark is being unveiled in the form of a giant statue of a man swimming through the pavement.

…

A week later, a similar statue will be installed on the concourse at Victoria Station, featuring a giant woman trying to squeeze into a photo booth. Her top rides up to reveal a tattoo of a pigeon.

The statues will remain in place for a few weeks before being moved to different locations across the UK.

We look forward to seeing what the piece looks like; send a photo our way if you see the statue.

UPDATE: Some Flickr photos of the woman in the booth — wow!

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.

A brief trip to Santa Barbara gave us the opportunity to scout out a few photobooths in the area, bringing our California total to somewhere around fifty booths. On our way up the coast, we stopped at the Woolworth Museum, an informal collection of Woolworth memorabilia and related items in an old Woolworth location in Oxnard. After a tasty breakfast at the cafe, we took some photos in their beautiful Model 11 booth, though the chemicals are in desperate need of changing. Even more interesting that the booth itself was the great photobooth advertising display in the front window of the cafe, a backlit rectangular tower featuring enlarged photostrips slowly blinking on and off. I’d never seen anything quite like it; a small plaque on the bottom indicates that it is a product of the Auto-Photo Company of California.

In Santa Barbara, I had to rely on the kindness of a movie theater cashier who told me that while her theater did not have a booth, another one down the street did, as did a costume store a few blocks in the other direction on the same street. So, I took a set of photos at the Fiesta 5 Theatre’s color photobooth and then headed a few blocks down to Scavenge, to use their black-and-white booth, which sits in the entryway, almost outside.

Troubled times at Photo-Me International: yesterday saw a news report about the mounting pressure from shareholders on Photo-Me’s bosses to resign; apparently, the pressure was too much for chairman Vernon Sankey and chief executive Serge Crasnianski to bear, and today, they have been forced to resign.

According to the BBC, two of the investment companies that own a sufficient chunk of the company have been unhappy with management for some time.

…Principle Capital and Cycladic said they felt that progress with the sale and other aspects of a strategic review launched last year was insufficient.

They accused Mr Sankey and Mr Crasnianski of “operational mismanagement” and noted a “long history of poorly managing investor expectations.”

As we’ve said before, time will tell what effect these changes have on the world of public photobooths, which are just one aspect of Photo-Me’s business.

It’s not clear what impact this news will have on the world of photobooths, but it seems that Photo-Me Intl. has found “sufficient interest in its vending division” to continue with the process of unloading the division on the highest bidder, says Reuters.