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Livia Satriano published author and writer of the vintage photo blog Assez-Vu, has been kind enough to pen a piece about the film project I did with Dick Jewell, for the online magazine Lost at E Minor.

Her mentioning the film Amélie, reminds me of a post I have been meaning to write about a series of peculiar photos I found discarded near Melbourne photobooths in the early nineties. More of that soon, I hope. In the meantime please click here to read her article.

The publishers of Lost At E Minor describe it as “an online publication of inspiring art, design, music, photography and pop culture: low brow sensibilities mashed with high brow movements. The site was founded in 2005 by brothers Zolton and Zac Zavos, who are also behind the Australian sports opinion website, The Roar. The site is compiled by a worldwide team of writers.”

Livia is an Italian media graduate based in Milan. She works as a freelance writer and researcher, mainly writing about music, art and culture. Here are more of her articles at Wunder Buzz.

‘s blog is well worth checking out, too. She says Assez Vu is “a collection of visual memories: all things odd and beautiful from the past. Sometimes remembered, more often forgotten. Surely worthy to be seen.”

I have no idea where this set of pictures was discovered, what the date was, or even the country in which it was found . I’ve no idea if I myself retrieved it from oblivion, or if a friend found it for me. I can only imagine that these two cuties were extremely disappointed when they found they no longer had it.

Found, Luna Park, 08/09/1996

Today is the first time since 1996 that I have attempted to reconstruct this strip. Initially, I didn’t recognise these fragments as belonging together. I am surprised at how differently the pieces have aged. A possible reason for the vastly different tones, could be that some were discoloured by other items that were in the bin where they were found. I cringe at the thought.

So what happened here? This young couple entered the booth and snuggled up, looking at the camera, smiling as each flash went off. They waited excitedly for the photos to drop into the shoot. While still wet, they looked at them together and he agreed that there was at least one wonderful shot of her, but none of him that he could admire. She liked them all despite the off kilter framing. They couldn’t agree to disagree. Within five minutes he’d torn up the strip and binned it.

Our young lady returned later to retrieve the cast off images that she’d liked, for the most part not bothering to collect the images of him. She was still in a huff about the destruction of an, albeit flawed, memento.

Luna Park 08/09/1996

When living in London, as my fascination with the products of automatic photography grew, I started to collect discarded photobooth photos. I have many to share but thought I’d choose a random one from Melbourne, to start with.

There used to be two old black and white, “dip and dunk”, chemical photobooths at Luna Park, a very old amusement park in the bay-side Melbourne suburb of St Kilda. Living only a short tram trip away, it was easy for me to pop in on a regular basis. Entry to the park has always been free, so it never cost me anything to scrounge around the bins and behind the booths, looking for jettisoned photographic ephemera, whilst taking a few snaps of my own for posterity.

Some days I would find complete undamaged strips, other days a few remaining remnants. I find these torn photos, melancholic and charming in their beaten up, unloved state. One can see why this pic didn’t meet the sitters’ standards, with the blank, black, blob of doom above them. Yet, I can see merit in the one picture that worked, enough to have made me treasure it, if I had been one of the subjects.

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