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Another Litter Find From La Luna

June 26, 2014
Found Photobooth Photos
4 Comments

Found, Luna Park 08/09/1996

Another found photo from the 90’s. I find these pics extremely amusing. There is something of Frankenstein’s monster in the lobotomised head I have had to “stitch” back on and in the stunned-mullet, slow-brained look on the face of this sitter.  One must say that he and his friend were not the brightest of individuals, having missed most of the flashes before sitting down to pose.

I never found the final photo that looks like it may have actually worked, but that was okay, for I had plenty of fun with the other remnants.

My Fotobooth Frankenstein

Ice Creams – Part One – 18 December 1998

February 13, 2013
Photobooth 45 Year Project (Archive)
4 Comments

photobooth18:12:1998#01

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.

A Man In My Life – 21 January 1995

December 3, 2011
Photobooth 45 Year Project (Archive)
11 Comments

Luna Park 21/01/1995

On Melbourne Cup Day 1994, I met my future husband, (unfortunately, now ex-husband), at a Cup Day barbeque hosted by a school friend. We both bet on the same horse that won the cup that year. From the first, we got on really well. We rented a flat in the Melbourne suburb of Balaclava, coincidentally, not far from my favourite photobooths at Luna Park.

I was continuing to develop my hand-made greeting card ranges and thinking about how to move to the next step – publishing my designs.

Photographic Palaeontologist Probes Skeletal Remains

November 30, 2011
Found Photobooth Photos
6 Comments

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.

Never Ashamed To Be A Bin Diver

November 24, 2011
Found Photobooth Photos
2 Comments

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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