Last year, I began searching French eBay for photobooth (or photomaton) items, such as the photobooth stool I noted last April. One of the items I mention in that entry is a publicity brochure for Photomaton, the French manufacturers of photobooths, and though it’s taken me awhile, I’ve finally got the item scanned and uploaded into our In Print: Ads section.

The brochure, a tri-fold piece that looks like it dates from sometime in the 1990s, is a brief bande dessinée adventure by Ted Benoît, a renowned illustrator in the “ligne claire” school of graphic artists. A private investigator, Ben Marquette, wanders Los Angeles, stopping at photobooths along the way, outside a movie theater, in a train station, and in a shopping center.

I haven’t translated the entire thing, but in the frame I’ve included here, Marquette mentions something to the effect that as he looks at the machine, he knows immediately that it will do something to his cheeks and give him the eyes of a Boston terrier. I’d appreciate any help if someone cares to expand on this poor job, and explain the last sentence (“to stripe my shelves”?) as well.

UPDATE: According to the author (see comments), that last line means “something like ‘blot out of one’s records (or note book, etc)’.”

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.

Odile Marchoul, creator of the project she calls La photo-sculpture, has taken a photobooth photo every week since 1999. The photos, always in a set of four square, taken by a digital “Photo-Vision” booth, trace a remarkable timeline of subtle changes, daily moods, and life changing events, from getting a job to having a baby. As Marchoul writes,

it’s a project that i would like to inscribe in time & space, that will grow and change over the years. it’s a picture of my face, a face that is changing. in this project i consider myself as a living ‘subject’, a sculpture that is under construction.

The project has been archived in the Projects section. Thanks to JK for reminding us of it recently.

Photo: “vienna, 16.04.2003 wien-mitte, noon. I’m going to the airport.”

It all started with a Google search, as most things do, these days. I was looking for more videos featuring photobooths — you know they’re out there — and I came across this post on cinematography.net from a director of photography who needed to shoot a scene for a music video in which a photobooth flash goes off, with the requirement that the flash be able to be synched to the shutter of the camera he was using to shoot the scene.

The message was posted in January, and I began looking around to see the work that the cinematographer, Tom Townend, had done. I came across what looked like a somewhat incomplete but at least recent list on the music video database, but no luck with photobooths in any of the videos listed there.

The forum thread gets a little off-topic, but Townend responded with an update later on, saying that the photobooth used for the shoot eventually became “a build in the studio (for ‘booth pov’ shot).” Now I knew at least what I was looking for, and as I tried a little more searching today, I came across Townend’s management company page, with many more samples of his (really nice) work, including videos for Doves (great song, great video by Lynne Ramsay) and Arctic Monkeys. The video for the song “New York” by Stephen Fretwell, a young singer from Scunthorpe by way of Manchester, for which Tom Townend was the director of photography with director Daniel Wolfe, ends with a series of inside-the-booth shots of Fretwell as the flash goes off. Mystery solved, and one more addition to the list of Photobooths in Music Videos.

As the mini posting spree continues, a result of what seems like a now-monthly resolution to “post more of that stuff that’s otherwise just sitting around” during a slow news week, we have “Life Imitates Music,” a 2002 MTV commercial spot for a non-existent band called “The Lack” who make an album cover using photobooth strips.

It fulfills all of the conventions of the photobooth-based TV commercial: the photobooth, standing alone in a well-lit room with checkboard floor and a kiddie ride nearby, with young people mugging inside, seen from the perspective of the photobooth camera as well as from outside, half-obscured by the curtain. With a soundtrack, though somewhat mangled, by the Strokes, the brief spot has a nice energy to it but seems somewhat pointless — though we probably shouldn’t complain when an ad doesn’t actually seem to be advertising anything.

Back in February, when we posted a note about Liz Rideal’s photoboothed plants on display in Philadelphia, we were suprised to come across another example of Rideal’s photobooth work we’d not heard of before. Somehow, in front of our watchful eyes, perhaps the largest photobooth photos ever managed to slip by.

As reported by the BBC in an article titled “Kerfuffle on Broadcasting House,” a giant piece depicting four photobooth photos was on display from May to July of 2004, covering over restoration work at the BBC’s Broadcasting House on Regent Street in London.

The huge piece (22 metres x 15.4 metres), created by enlarging tiny composite images taken in a photo booth, shows the artist’s hand drawing back a sumptuous red curtain.

The gigantic photographic image, surely the biggest set of photo booth photos ever made, covers the ‘prow’ of the BBC’s iconic building, currently undergoing restoration work.

Information about Kerfuffle is available on Rideal’s website, as is more information on the artist herself. Also, check out Photobooth.net’s artist page for her.

Photo © BBC 2004.

The photobooth described on the From K to J: About the Booth page sounds fascinating and wonderful. After taking photos of the occupant, the booth adds its own contribution to the photos:

The booth is presented in semi-public spaces as a typical photobooth holding no denotation of its unique qualities. Users enter the booth, pose for 2 shots & exit as usual. During the developing process, the photos are “analyzed” & customized with forecasts consisting of patterns, symbols & messages.

While you’re visiting the site, check out the hundreds of wonderful examples (lookin’ good, for a digital booth!) that the booth has produced. We’d love to learn how the process works and hear from people who’ve used the booth. We’ve got the project archived in the Projects section as well.

The photobooth from The Collective is for sale on eBay. Photobooths pop up from time to time on eBay, and while we try to keep track of them, sometimes they slip through the cracks. From this point forward we will move photobooths for sale on eBay to the discussion group, unless there is something unique or spectacular about the booth.

While we’re at it, there are also some nice looking photobooths for sale by way of Canada.

Thanks to a tip and photos from my cousin Jo, Photobooth.net has caught wind of a window display at the 

Saks Fifth Avenue in San Francisco in which manequins mingle around a photobooth presumably waiting their turn. The text displayed on the window reads “The Photobooth Project by Christopher Irion.” On first glance, it seemed that Irion might be the designer of the clothes being modeled by the manequins, but Dr. Google informs us that Irion is a photographer who travelled the country with a portable digital photography studio taking more than 600 portraits. This he dubbed “The Photobooth Project.” It is unclear whether the booth is available inside Saks or the portraits Irion took are on display in the store.

more…

A few months ago we made note of the photobooth that makes an appearance in the new “Sims 2” game. Thanks to the wonder of YouTube, now we’ve got a video of the photobooth in action. I won’t hazard a guess as to what exactly is going on in the booth, but it’s nice to see what it looks like in the “real” world.

According to another screen capture, this one on Flickr, you can “take photos of your sims and then save them in your sim’s inventory or place them in their homes,” an example of which you can see on the wall of the Sims in the image. It’s a two-by-two grid rather than a strip of four, but I suppose it’s too much to expect a photobooth in a digital world to be a dip-and-dunk model…