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About A Boy – June 1958

July 20, 2016
About A Boy, Vintage Photobooth
21 Comments

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This is the first of a set of eight photobooth strips from the United States. Each of the strips is dated on the front and back. Unfortunately there are no other details recorded.

I imagine this cheeky and handsome young man to be 8 or 9 in this strip, making him around 14 or 15 in the last of them. As you will see as this series progresses, he is not afraid to play the fool in front of the camera, more so in some of the strips than others.

As I have said before, I love a sequence of photobooth photos that show the changes in a person from one year to the next. Booth photos are particularly well suited to watching someone as they grow up or grow older, due to their main focus being on head and shoulders. It is part of the reason I love them so much.

Faces Pulling Faces

June 1, 2016
Vintage Photobooth
16 Comments

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There is no information on the back of these photos to indicate a place, names or dates, despite the previous owner having gone to the trouble of numbering each photo. Why they should have been numbered 1, 2, 3 is unclear, as judging by the clothes of the boy who appears in all three shots, the images were taken on two different days.

I guess the boy who is mugging for the camera in the first photo is a brother of the guy in uniform. It is a shame he didn’t join in the face pulling. Maybe he liked his perfect look in his military duds too much to play the fool whilst wearing them. Or maybe he was too nervous to think of it, as he may well have been off on his first posting overseas.

I bought these photos as much for the background as for the fabulous, goofy faces. It was the first time I had seen a battleship in a backdrop. I have since found a few more, which I will share with you in coming posts.

I am guessing these images were made during WW2 as the military theme would have suited the many last souvenir photos that would have been made at that time.

Congratulations!

April 6, 2016
Random Posts
13 Comments

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  1. Congratulations and thanks to my 1000th follower, P.M.M. from Dublin. Below is a photobooth image of the subscriber, who got into the swing of the things very quickly. She was a beautiful baby, but baby you should see her now!

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You rock, P.M.M.!

2. Congratulations to me, as I never thought I would get so much interest in my collection and still be blogging 4 1/2 years after my first tentative posts in the blogosphere.

3. Congratulations to all my followers, some of whom I now count as friends. Thanks for all the support, encouragement and help you have given me.

Onwards to 2000!

Now to get back to some overdue work replying to your comments. . .

Violeta Tayeh – Artist of the Booth

October 26, 2015
Photobooth Art
16 Comments

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My previous post about Jeff Nachtigall came about through his image and mine appearing on the same page of Meags Fitzgerald’s photobooth book. Another photobooth aficionado, Violeta Tayeh also appeared on the same page.

Here is some of Violeta’s story in her own words –

I only came across photobooths in 2010 through a relationship I had developed with Dirklancer (Jeff Nachtigall) through the Lomography Society website. There he posted a link to his personal blog, The Art of Waiting where he held a photobooth competition.

The lomography community always has online photo competitions with different themes in mind and between 2007 and 2010, I always entered. I’d tell my husband we needed to go to the beach because I wanted to take some shots to enter a comp. That was not unusual. So entering Jeff’s was not a stretch at all. It was just a different type of camera.

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Violeta’s competition entry

Jeff sent me a link to photobooth.net and I used their locator to find some photobooths in my area. Turned out that all the booths in Maryland and Washington DC were either out of service, or removed. I looked up Philadelphia, located 3 booths to visit and made a day trip out of it. 

I painted my own backgrounds (see above).  I fell in love with this form of photography that day. The problem is that a few months after these strips were taken, we went back to visit Philly and the store which had the booth was closed down. The photobooth was auctioned off. Since there weren’t many booths near me, I tried to visit booths when we’d go on vacation somewhere, like this one: 

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The last day we went snowboarding for the season

So up until the Photobooth Convention in 2014, I had taken less than 25 strips, so not too much art making was going on. But at the convention, my husband and I took over 50 strips together in two days! Definitely wished I could have stayed for the last day. I probably would have been able to make larger pieces with multiple strips. It’s difficult trying to make artwork with more than two strips when someone else is waiting in line to use the booth so I didn’t try to do that but I did pick up a few techniques from talking to others there.

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Les Matons

July 1, 2015
Photobooths in Print
8 Comments
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Cover of the book, Les Matons

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On 19 June 1988 in a photobooth at a Barcelona railway station, ​​artists Hélène Fabre and Christian Bonifas made a series of souvenir photos without thinking further than the pleasure of the moment.

Once home in Nîmes, having been amused by their holiday mementos, they sought out another station hall booth. So began their long infatuation with automatic photography.
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After twenty-five years and more than 1500 portraits they still haunt these mini studios to capture their moods, movements and ideas.

Since 1989, under the pseudonym Les Matons they have exhibited these portraits as enlarged color photocopies.

In 2007, they published their first book, a self-titled paperback showcasing a selection of one hundred booth photographs in black & white and colour. (See cover and sample images from the book, above). With accompanying texts by Clotilde Augot, Rémy Leboissetier, Christine Rodes and Bertrand Guery and a song by Frederic Inigo, it is an ode to the Photomaton machine and the variety of creative uses to which it can be put.

Over 136 pages Hélène and Christian dress-up for, laugh, grimace, writhe and twist through fun and surprising poses that are delightfully entrancing. The artistic perspective of these two performers fills every frame.

In 2013, they released a new book, “Small Nature” which presents sixty-four new photobooth pictures. I will write more about Les Matons and show you some images from that book in a later post.

Sister Sue on Hols in Oz

August 14, 2014
Digital Photobooth Images
12 Comments

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My darling sister Susie still has a few days left in Australia before her return to her home in Dublin. Above is one of 10 photobooth strips we have taken so far on this visit. Four of the strips are colour digital ones and 6 are from a black and white chemical booth.

This series of photos was taken at my closest photobooth which is in Frankston, Victoria. On the day these were taken, we were there to see the film Guardians of the Galaxy (we both loved it) and to buy Sue’s favourite sweet treat, peanut butter dream bars. There was also the need for a photobooth adventure, as per my obsession, which Sue very kindly indulges.

Photomaton Geant – The Giant Photobooth in Paris

May 28, 2014
Photobooth News
6 Comments

This photobooth is, in essence, a giant outdoor advertisement for McDonalds “Come As You Are” promotional campaign. Photomaton is the original company name for many of the world’s photobooths and is the generic term for the booths in France and other European countries.

The interactive booth is situated at La Defense in Paris. The  “Come As You Are” campaign focuses on the values ​​of diversity, acceptance and the spirit of hospitality. The booth has a touch interface which offers the public an opportunity to take pictures that are integrated directly into the campaign visuals on a giant screen. As you can see from the video, the participant receives a large printout of their photo from the booth and can also receive the picture via email.

The video was only posted 24 hours ago on the production company’s Vimeo page, so it is possible it is still up and running. Any readers in Paris able to pop over and check it out? Let me know what you find.

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