I recently did a post about Meg from De Quelle Planète Est-Tu? and her love of photobooths. Through her I found another photobooth enthusiast in Paris who has blogged a list and map of locations of booths in that famous city.
The strip, above, is from her post You’re on (not so) Candid Camera! which is where you will find all the details.
Thank you to Sylvia for permission to use her images.
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
4,329 films were submitted to the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. This blog had 15,000 views in 2012. If each view were a film, this blog would power 3 Film Festivals
Click here to see the complete report.
Happy New Year Everyone!
25 October 1997, Luna Park, Melbourne
Despite having taken many long hours trying to get all my booth photos in chronological order, my desperately depleted brain seems to have worked against me most spectacularly. For the project with Dick Jewell I initially put all the strips of me alone in booths, in what I thought was the correct order. For phase two of the project I added images of myself and others in booths taken in Australia and around the world. As soon as I thought I’d cracked it, new pics would turn up from some long forgotten box or I’d realise that all those lovely sequences from June to August 1998 were actually a mix of June to August 1998 and 1999.
I really should have changed my hairstyle more often, then such mistakes would have been immediately obvious. To cut a long and frustrating story short, after a considerable break, I now return to adding some of the photos from the series that sparked my passion for photobooth photographs. I hope I’ve finally got everything in the right order.
This picture is one of a strip of four. I am pictured with my dear buddy Coral whom I met when travelling in South America with Helen. Coz was here from France to visit relatives. When we first met in Peru in 1989, she was taking time off from teaching in Sydney. She travelled in the Americas for two years before briefly returning home, prior to decamping to live in a 13th century water mill in France.
If you have a hankering to visit the wilds of the Midi-Pyrénées Coral now runs a successful Bed and Breakfast business from the mill, Moulin du Goth, with her husband Bill. She and Bill have spent many back-breaking years restoring the mill and garden (with a little help from the snail erradication experts, Moana and I). They deservedly receive return visits from guests from all over the world.
This strip is part of the series Photobooth 41 Year Project. You can see all the posts that document the series by clicking here.
July 1994, Abbeville, France.
Once I was given notice from my nannying job, I needed to work out quickly what my next move should be. I decided it was time to go home, so with Del’s help, started to get everything organised.
Del packed up all the things I had left at her house in West Norwood and brought them to her cottage in Normandy, along with Rich, his school friend Alastair and my cousin from New Zealand, Rachel McsShane, who had recently arrived in the UK for work. Unfortunately Rosie was unable to come that weekend so we arranged for her to come to meet me a week later for a day out at Boulogne. Saying good bye was a bit traumatic as I had no idea what the nasty stamp in my passport meant. I had asked several times when I would be allowed to revisit the UK. Each time my grumpy tormentor answered “How long is a piece of string?”, no matter how I phrased the question.
Our time at the cottage was taken up with leisurely breakfasts, lunches and dinners, interspersed with walks, a bit of sight-seeing and lots of nattering. Croissants and other delightful French pastries, were purchased daily from a mobile shop in the back of a van. The proprietor supplied the local farms in the region with most daily necessities, such as bread, milk and cheese.
Young Roo gobbled up copious numbers of pain au chocolat (chocolate filled croissants), anytime he could get his hands on them, gleefully turning our stomachs by slathering them with nutella, additional to the dark chocolate filling it came with. He was able to work off all the extra kilojoules doing what little boys do, helped on by my good-self during a frenetic water fight with him and Alastair. I was undoubtedly the loser, ending up immeasurably wetter than my faster moving combattants.
These photos were taken at Abbeville railway station on the 3rd of July on my way back to Paris. They were to be my last European photobooth photos for some years.
I met Daphne in my time as a student at the Université de Savoie. Like me she was there to learn French. As an historian of seventeenth century French history, Daphne had a firm purpose in needing to understand the language better and was a dedicated student.
I believe we became firm friends the first day we met. She is a feisty and passionate woman who knows how to spin a great yarn, and that she frequently did on our regular walks together, through the countryside that surrounds the medieval, alpine town of Annecy.
One walk, coming out of a wooded copse into open farmland, something about an empty old Victorian bathtub, that had been left in a field for watering the cows, prompted a funny story from Daphne. The tale resulted in me taking off most of my clothes, leaping into the tub and posing for pictures as though I was having a bath. It having been the middle of an icy, northern hemisphere, mountain winter, my nude bath scene cost me no small measure of discomfort and goosebumps. Daphne assures me she has the photos somewhere but to this day I have never seen them. I am wondering if I still want to.
We have shared other adventures together such as a visit to Paris where we met up with Georges to visit the Musée Rodin, a touristy day out in Toronto with a lunch at the Royal Canadian Yacht Club and fine dining in Montreal that resulted in food poisoning for her mum and I.
This fun and varied photo strip of Daphne was taken somewhere in France in March 1994 as a (very special) present for me.
May 1994, Paris
Alex was my charge for three months whilst working as a nanny in Paris. He was a happy, intelligent child who loved to get in there, help and do. Like many boys of 18 months, he loved motorcycles and any type of shiny, large, noisy vehicle. Once aware of his passion, I would get him out of his buggy and let him sit on one or more of the parked motorcycles we regularly passed on our frequent walks to the Eiffel Tower park. I often wondered if he gave his mum hell, after I left, trying to get her to do the same.
We were once stopped by a group of tourists who asked for me to put Alex on a particularly cool and powerful looking bike. He then posed outrageously while they took multiple snaps. Unfortunately I had no camera of my own to capture his extremely cute mugging.
This photo of Alex and me was taken on 31 May at one of Paris’s many metro stations.
April 1994, Neufchâtel, France
Today I am wallowing in the joy of having yesterday received a most wonderful and extraordinary gift from the now grown up little girl in this picture. Rosie was married to her Mr (W)Right earlier this year. They have sent me, from the UK, a supremely polished, high-quality, printed and personalised book of their wedding photos. I was immensely disappointed not to have been able to attend the celebrations due to my illness, so was exceptionally chuffed to receive such a fine gift.
In a very twenty-first century move, they have both changed their surnames into a lovely amalgamation of their two original patronymics. Mr B. Wright and Ms R. Holbrook are now Mr and Mrs Holbright. Having been a long, long time ago, adopted by Rosie and re-christened Kitty Griffbrook, I now, too, will be changing my name, however Griffright (Rosie’s choice)to me has not quite the ring to it as Griffbright. (My suggestion). With my tangled mass of unruly hair having “fright” as part of my unofficial name is daunting to say the least, but I will by necessity, go with Rosie’s final decision!
This photo of me, Ros and her brother, Rich (Roo) was taken at a booth at a Leclerc supermarket in Neufchâtel on the 30 of April 1994. I was invited to stay at Del’s cottage in Normandy, on my way to Paris, before starting my nannying job. Also in our party with Del, Rosie, Roo and I, were Del’s delightful neighbours Val and her daughter Ella, with whom it is impossible not to have a great laugh. I regret that I didn’t get the two of them into a booth that day, too.
1961
April 1962
December 1962
30/12/1966
Some years ago I bought a group of booth strips of the same woman. The photos were from France. I thought they were a brilliant find, showing the same lady through two relationships and many different fashionable hairstyles of the 1960s. In the images of her alone, I imagine her popping into a booth on the way home from her hairdresser to record the newest “do”. Above are four of the 14 strips. Only seven of the group are dated. There is no indication as to the place they were taken on any of them. As with most of my collection, I feel a certain proprietary relationship with each sitter, especially if I have more than one photo covering a period of time. Thus I was delighted when my lovely lady came into my life again earlier this year, in a most surprising way, of which I will tell you more in a later post.
March 1968
Chronologically, this is the next of the dated booth photos of the series of 14 of my lovely French lady. This strip was cut, as you can see. I especially love this photo as my sister was born in the same month and year. Why does that make any difference? I suppose I enjoy seeing what else was going on in another private world at a significant time in the life of my family, similarities and differences, another incarnation of the period. I am amused by the fact that at around the same era, my mum had a furry hat very similar to the one worn above and she was also fond of the same type of fashionable silk scarf.
Photobooth Journal 