Two oft-cited but hard to find photobooth art books are currently listed on eBay. The first is photo-booth, a zine-like photobooth pic book by Billy Childish (prolific rocker, poet, artist, author). It purports to be the artist’s personal copy, but my guess is that it probably isn’t Billy’s personal copy, rather one of a small number of Artist’s Proofs that were printed. Rare, nonetheless.

The second book, Andy Warhol Photobooth Pictures, is the exhibition catalog from the 1989 Andy Warhol photobooth exhibit at the Robert Miller Gallery in New York. I have never seen this book in person, but occasionally see it listed in online bookstores. It never lists for less than $250. Perhaps this is a chance to get it for cheap.

It’s been a few weeks since a photobooth has been listed for sale on eBay, but today brings us a color booth sold by American Amusement Co. of Rossville, Georgia. The five day auction begins with an opening bid of one dollar and features no reserve price, so watchful enthusiasts out there could walk away with this one at a bargain price.

The seller doesn’t make any detailed descriptions of the condition of the machine, stating only that the machine “should work fine, just needs supplies.”

I know there must be a taxonomy of photobooth machines out there, but I’m not familiar with it at this point. I’d love to be able to describe this machine, and any others we come across, with some sort of name, series, number, year, or other category that would help us keep track of the fascinating differences among the machines.

I came across a couple of nice photos of foto/photoautomaten on Antenna’s Fotolog recently. One of them even features “ein Wartebänkchen,” or “little waiting bench” — gotta love German compound nouns. From my rudimentary research, I place them in Berlin, though I’m not certain. Their unique designs are really terrific — I’d love to visit them sometime.

As a way of catching up with blog-worthy material from the recent past, I’ll be posting some notes about articles and mentions that are worth noting but aren’t the newest of the new. The most useful and well-written article from a major paper in the past year is Rob Elder’s May 25, 2004 piece from the Chicago Tribune, “The strange allure of photo booths,” still available online. Elder provides an in-depth look at the history of photobooths, looks into the relationship between traditional booths and digital machines, and goes on a pub crawl with Photo-Me’s Gary Gulley. Also included are words from Nakki Goranin and the felicitously named James Photopoulos of Photo’s Hot Dogs, longtime home to a photobooth in Mt. Prospect, Illinois.

A true photobooth devotee, Elder combines his personal experiences and thoughts about photobooths with historical background and interviews. He captures the attraction many people have with booths in one of his opening paragraphs: “For me, finding a photo booth is like discovering a chocolate egg long after Easter has ended. They’re often stashed away in the forgotten corners of America, in the dusty backroom of bars or lost in aging arcades.”

In addition to the excellent article, Elder includes three photo galleries and a lengthy list of Chicago-area photobooths, which I put to use in my October, 2004 visit to the city. 

Synthesizing articles from the Chicago Tribune and the New York Times into a brief catch-up, Richmond Times-Dispatch columnist Gary Robertson discusses photobooths in his American Trends column today. Nothing new to report, but when we start seeing news reports about news reports, something must be newsworthy.

Tonight, Ken and Deirdre, characters on the long-running UK soap Coronation Street will marry, and a photobooth has a role to play in the episode. Their wedding was set to coincide with the Royal Wedding of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles, but the funeral of Pope John Paul forced the royals to postpone their wedding by a day, and Coronation Street producers made some last-minute editing changes to go along with the re-scheduled nuptials. 

Bob Kevoian, co-host of the nationally syndicated morning radio show The Bob & Tom Show, got married this past weekend. The Indianapolis Star reports that the reception featured lots of great local music and a photobooth.

If Defamer thought the Times article was a buzzkill, wait ’till they read what the Orlando Sentinel has to say; let’s just say it involves comparing photobooths to “apple pie and baseball.” Titled “Back in the Picture,” the article in today’s Lifestyle section highlights some Orlando-area booths at Bar-B-Q-Bar and Eye Spy, and interviews the twenty- and thirty-somethings who use them. It also features words from Gary Gulley, once again, as well as Paul Kadillak, Babette Hines, and Nakki Goranin, “author of the forthcoming Photobooth Century: The History and Art of Photobooths of America.” Is this the book we’d been talking about, Tim?

The article mentions the requisite films (though it also manages to keep alive the myth that a photobooth makes an appearance in Parenthood, when it’s actually a photo developing stand) and gives a (very) brief history of the development of photobooths. Thank goodness we’re around to make note of everyone else making note of photobooths, that’s all I have to say.

A recent article in City Pages laments the change in ownership of local Minneapolis/St. Paul musical venue The Turf Club, but notes the “photo booth that launched a thousand romances” will persist. The broken photobooth (experienced by Mr. Meacham in November of 2004) seems to have been fixed (or so says the guy answering the phone there).

An Artdaily.com preview of the upcoming Christie’s New York Spring 2005 Photographs sale includes a mention of the well-known Holly Solomon photobooth photos. The set of six strips, taken at photobooths at 47th and Broadway in 1963 and 1964, is expected to fetch $40,000-$60,000 when the auction takes place April 26. The Warhol piece at right, a painting over silkscreened images, was adapted from one photo taken during Warhol and Solomon’s photobooth sessions. Asked about these sessions, Solomon, who died in 2002, said, “We went to Broadway and 47th Street, where they had this photobooth. Andy met me there, and we had a bunch of quarters. He was very particular about which booth. We tried a whole bunch of them… Actually, if you’re in a photobooth for a long time it gets pretty boring…” For more from Solomon on these photos, read this International Center of Photography article.