We don’t have an image of the photobooth photo yet, but the Poughkeepsie Journal reports that a new book of photographs called The Kennedy Mystique: Creating Camelot includes a photobooth shot of the future President and First Lady. Among the 150 photos, “Jack and Jackie appear in a photo-booth snapshot from 1953 — he smiling broadly and she appearing more reserved.” 

John F. Kennedy: A Life in Pictures from Phaidon Press also seems to include a photobooth photo of the couple, dated 1956; we’ll keep on the lookout to see if these two photos are the same.

The cover story of this week’s LA Weekly features “emerging artists” with photos of each artist taken in a photobooth. The piece, titled “Afterschool Art,” features black and white photobooth pictures from all of the artistst profiled. For the most part, the photos are real sections of photostrips, though in two cases, the photostrips appear fabricated: Clair Baker’s are staged (square photos rather than rectangular) and Jacob Stewart-Halevy’s photo is a single shot, not a photostrip at all. The other 19 artists play along, with Frank Ryan even bringing his dog in. The photos are included in the online version of the article, though the multi-colored cover of the print edition is quite striking and not available in a viewable size online.

Perhaps the photos were taken in the booth at Lucky Strike Lanes, or at the Edendale Grill, or at the Short Stop, if it’s no longer printing the name of the bar between each photo.

The traditional photobooth is the subject of a brief piece posted in the new sundayheraldtalk, the Sunday Herald’s “new place to debate issues affecting Scotland, the UK and the world.” In the editorial, titled “Life’s a cycle, but nothing this cool will happen again,” Diane Smyth, deputy editor of the British Journal of Photography, chooses the dip-and-dunk booth over the new digital photobooths because of the element of chance inherent in the analog booths:

OK so digital booths allow you to preview your photographs and edit out the dross. But where’s the fun in that? The frisson of excitement as you waited to see what God-awful photographs would drop into the out-tray has gone, overtaken by the control freakery of our image-obsessed society.

Smyth suggests mourning the death of the traditional booth, but if her readers were to follow her link to our very own Photobooth.net, they would find an oasis of photochemical goodness. We appreciate the link, and would offer that mourning is premature as the death of the traditional booth has so far been forestalled. 

An article in the Philadelphia Inquirer today announces the launch of a new photography website from the Smithsonian Photography Initiative. The article describes a few of the 1,800 photographs now available online, a small fraction of the massive Smithsonian photography collection. Among the photos in this first batch accessible online are photos of an extinct hyena, abolitionist John Brown, Jackson Pollock’s studio, and a photobooth photo of legendary photographer Ansel Adams.

There’s a zany self-portrait of Adams, taken in a photo booth. This 1930 snapshot with his hat pulled down to his eyes contrasts vividly with his open landscapes.

The photograph is from the collection of the Archives of American Art, in the Katherine Kuh Papers.

Photo: Ansel Adams, Photo Booth Self-Portrait, spi.si.edu.

This just in from the Dallas Morning News: a free photobooth at the front of the Imperial Palace Casino in Las Vegas is no more. According to the News Travel Column, “This great freebie falls victim to what has been a series of changes and revamps at the center-Strip casino since it was bought by Harrah’s.” We haven’t had any reports from people who have used the booth in the past to know if it was a traditional or digital booth. If anyone has memories of using the booth, please, comment or drop us a line. 

Just as the first trip across the country this summer saw a new location or two, the second trip has spawned a couple of discoveries as well. First, thanks to the Flickr ‘photobooth’ tag feed, I heard about a photobooth at Tex Tubb’s Taco Palace in Madison, Wisconsin a few months ago, and last week, had the chance to visit as we passed through town. The restaurant looks like a great place, though we didn’t have time to eat there; the photobooth is located near the passageway between the two areas of the restaurant, next to the bar and in front of the kitchen. It’s a black and white, Model 21T, and costs $3. The customized sign on the front panel of the booth reads, “Smile real perty and pin up your pic. Make your mama proud.” Customers are encouraged to place their photos on the wall of fame, underneath the 8‑track player, in the doorway.

In music video news, one night a few states ago, Aimee noticed a photobooth in the new Jessica Simpson video that was on the tv in the hotel room; the director of the video, Brett Ratner, explains why the photobooth makes an appearance.

This half of Photobooth.net is currently relocating from upstate New York to Southern California, and on the way, I’ve tried to find a few photobooth locations I haven’t seen before. Sadly, I only came across one along the road, but I also happened upon one here in Los Angeles.

At Sparky’s Roadhouse Café in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, we enjoyed a great meal, a beer from their huge selection, and a classic Model 11 photobooth. The booth turns out some great black and white photos, and each strip goes for two dollars (or a little more) in quarters.

Yesterday, wandering along Melrose in Los Angeles, I spotted a photobooth in the Marc Jacobs store, a booth that is apparently only there for a short time as part of a promotion. The booth is free, “one per customer,” and is also a nice black and white, a Model 25.

We’ve already got a number of photobooth locations in LA, but I’ll be on the lookout for more now that we’ll be living here — any advice is most welcome.

Bloomberg’s Carly Berwick reports on a new exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art that pays tribute to the late Susan Sontag. Sontag’s words are paired with photos she wrote about, and others that illustrate her ideas. Included is a Warhol photobooth strip:

The recently acquired Peter Hujar photograph of Sontag herself, taken in 1975, reveals the writer reclining, relaxed but fearsome. A quote nearby states that “photographs instigate, confirm, seal legends.” Sontag’s words become the occasion for putting the Hujar next to a circa-1963 Warhol photo-booth strip of self-portraits…

I was a big “Weird Al” Yankovic fan when I was a kid, I have to say. The real beginnings of my awareness of popular music coincided nicely with the advent of the CD, so I didn’t have many store-bought tapes besides a “Straight Up” cassingle here and a “Cocktail” soundtrack there… But I owned a cassette of every “Weird Al” album I could get my hands on, even the ones that parodied songs I didn’t know. I loved them for the same reasons everyone else did: they were funny. They were smart, too, and kind of amazing, the way he could make his songs sound just like the ones he was mocking. He’s a wonderful sort of constant in the world; even when you’re not paying attention, he’s still out there, doing what he does best.

A chance hearing of “You’re Pitiful,” his parody of the ubiquitous James Blunt song, brought us to his website, where, in his Photo Gallery, we found no fewer than eleven different photobooth shots, some with two photos blended together, of Al from his childhood. The list of “Famous in the Photobooth” gets a little longer.

Photo: Photo booth fun #1, weirdal.com.

As Ed Blank of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review writes in a review of The Break-Up, the tradition of photobooth photos as relationship montage is alive and well in 2006; it’s a wonder that it hasn’t gotten old yet. We’re not complaining, but have these people seen any movies before making this one?

After a montage of wacky photo-booth snapshots, which passes for the courtship, we cut straight to the stress.

We’ll see whether they’re real photobooth shots or not, and get a page up for the film once the DVD is released.