January 1999, Luna Park, Melbourne
This is the second and final strip of photos that I have with guide dog puppy, Hawkeye. (See previous Read More
Hawkeye’s Last Day – January 1999
10 Comments
Tag Archives: amusement park
Ice Creams – Part One – 18 December 1998
18 December 1998, Luna Park, Melbourne
My travelling companion, Moana, was visiting from the UK. My sister Sue, was temporarily living back in Australia, after a few years in Ireland. What better way to celebrate a reunion than with icecreams and a photobooth session?
This strip is part of the series Photobooth 41 Year Project. You can see all the posts that document the series by clicking here.
Pennyland, New Jersey – Summer 1938
This blithe young man looks to me to be around 15 to 16 years old. Do you think it is one of the first times he was let off the leash by his parents? The cheeky look on his face in both pictures, but particularly in the pose with the cigarette, suggests, YES! Were these taken to impress a girlfriend, show off to his mates or as an accidental souvenir of his right of passage to adulthood? Whatever the case they were someone’s memento for many decades. Despite being faded, tarnished and stained, the photos radiate youthful joie de vivre some 74 years after they were taken. I can still feel his glee.
From what I have been able to discover, there were many Pennyland centres around the US and Canada offering a large selection of games and coin operated machines to amuse all ages. I think some were stand alone places but more generally they were part of a larger amusement park. The Pennyland where the above photos were taken has long since disappeared, as I can find no reference to it online. Any helpful information from out there would be most welcome!
Entrance to the Pennyland Arcade at the Glen Echo (Maryland) Amusement Park, 1928.
View of the Pennyland Arcade at 131 Royal Street, New Orleans. Date unknown.
Fairy Floss Found Photo – Luna Park, Melbourne
This is a wonderful series of photos of a pair of older lovers eating the yummy carnival confection, known in Australia as fairy floss. To me this is a treasure that shows spontaneity, joy, fun, sharing, love. Isn’t it lovely the way the woman’s partner is looking at her in the fourth picture?
I don’t mind that she closed her eyes in the third pic, but maybe she didn’t like it. Whatever the reason, as with so many of my other jewels, it was binned. I can’t help thinking that it must have been thrown away especially for me to find to love and treasure. Thanks guys!
This strip of photobooth photos was found in a bin at Melbourne’s Luna Park amusement palace, on the 25th of November 2000.
Never Ashamed To Be A Bin Diver
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.
Photobooth Journal 