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Toothless Cutie Plus One

May 26, 2016
Vintage Photobooth
21 Comments

photoboothtoothlessCutie&friend

Here we have two cheeky little misses. The booth chair being too low, makes them appear to be very, very small and almost pixie-like. Adding to that impression is the goofy gap-toothed smile on one and the cute freckles on the other.

With two similarly, badly cut fringes, (“Gee, thanks Ma!”), I would suggest they are sisters. But of course they could be best friends with a penchant for playing hairdresser with mummy’s dressmaking scissors.

This strip is from the USA and probably dates to the late 1960s or early 70s.

Just What Is Going On In This Photo?

May 19, 2016
Vintage Photobooth
20 Comments

photoboothSerbianCouple

When I was living in Guatemala, my companion and I boarded with a local family who took in travellers from all over the world. We met some fabulous people and some peculiar ones. We learned to be wary of a very odd young lady, who amongst other unusual habits, would offer her hand to recent arrivals and ask them to “sniff this”. It was invariably at breakfast time, after she had just emerged from her bedroom, so the offer was usually brusquely and firmly refused.

So has the gentleman with his bodgie hairstyle, (look it up, those of you who don’t come from Oz) proffered his hand for a good sniffing, or for a strangely ardent kiss? The photo is so funny and weird. What do you make of it?

The photo was from a Serbian seller, so I hope it is from Serbia. It was taken in Hagen, Germany, in December 1964.

(Update 19 August, 2016) My thanks to Peter from Documenting the Obvious for working out where this strip was taken.

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Togetherness – Sultry Lady, Lucky Soldier

May 18, 2016
Vintage Photobooth
13 Comments

photoboothSultry1940sWW2couple

Someone has kept these two battered and dirty photobooth photos side by side for a long time, possibly in a purse or wallet. They found their way to a US flea market in unison, too.

With no information on the backs, these photos could have been taken anywhere, but the uniform of the soldier and the style of luxurious, tumbling curls of the young woman mark these as having been made at a particular time; WW2. There is a melancholy look to their smiles. Was it a wartime romance cut short by an imminent departure for duty, perhaps?

It is cute that they both blinked at the same time in the second image. It gives the impression that they are both meditating on their love, sending their thoughts to each other through their heads-together embrace. You can see the soldier’s hand at bottom right of each image, holding his girl tight. He never wanted to let her go.

I hope it wasn’t just the photos that remained together. Now that these photos are mine, I can guarantee, that at least in these two dimensions, they will never be parted.

 

 

Love And Memory

May 16, 2016
Vintage Photobooth
30 Comments

HENSHAW Grace1_baby SLOAN Sherri 1967 late

This is a very special post of photobooth photos from one of my blog readers, Sherri. I have tried to present this story mainly in Sherri’s own words.

“My love for photobooth images comes from those that I have of my mother.  She was killed in an auto accident when I was just 7 months old, so all I have of her are photos, no memories.  My favorite photos of her have always been the photobooth strips.  It may sound silly or strange, but I feel like they are the next best thing to having a memory of her.  In those strips, I feel like I can feel how she was feeling in the booth, trying out poses, smiling, laughing.

They are all attached to a page in my baby book. (See the full page, below). There are also booth photos of my maternal grandmother (who, by the way, is the person who raised me after my mother’s death).

I found a note in the baby book telling that the photos taken in July, 1967  in a Fort Wayne, Indiana KMart store.  The other booth images would also have been taken in Fort Wayne, Indiana, but I can’t be sure of the store.
 
My mother was Grace Charline (nee Henshaw) Sloan, born December 26, 1949 and died October 7, 1967.  My name is Sherri Lynn and I was born March 5, 1967.  My grandmother’s name was Mary Louis (nee Shenfeld) Didion, born February 6, 1925.”
HENSHAW Grace1_baby SLOAN Sherri 1967 Aug
Sherri has a wonderful vintage photo blog The Rescued Photo, which I encourage you to visit. She meticulously researches the lives of the sitter/s from any scant detail she can glean from a scribbled name or note. Sherri’s philosophy about blogging is closely related to her feelings about her photobooth photos of her mother – that the story behind the images allow the person, or people in them, to live on.
 
Most unusually and unselfishly, Sherri will give the photos back to family members. However it is not always an easy process.
 

“I  hope that someday relatives will find my posts.  So far, I’ve only located one relative of a photograph but not one I’ve blogged about. They said they would love to have the photo and would send me their address, but they never did.  I followed up once and still didn’t hear back.  I noticed they’re using the photo in their ancestry family tree, so maybe the digital copy was enough for them.

I did find a home for the most recent photo I blogged – Orlo C Mathews and his brothers.  Orlo is the survivor of the Sultana maritime disaster. While researching him, I discovered a book he owned (about the Sultana) is housed in the Bedford Ohio Historical Society Museum.  I contacted them and they are excited to add the photo to the book.  Imagine how much more interesting it will be for people to be able to see a photo of the man who owned the book and survived the disaster!  I’m so thrilled with how that turned out!  I hope to have more of those moments!

Just like my blogging about photos I find, makes me feel like I’m helping the people in the images to live on, I feel like that’s what you will be doing for me by blogging the photos of my mother.”

HENSHAW Grace2_baby SLOAN Sherri 1967 AugHENSHAW Grace1 1967 Aug
HENSHAW Grace5_baby SLOAN Sherri 1967 Aug 11HENSHAW Grace4_baby SLOAN Sherri 1967 Aug 11
HENSHAW Grace3_baby SLOAN Sherri 1967 Aug 11HENSHAW Grace2_baby SLOAN Sherri 1967 Aug 11
HENSHAW Grace1_baby SLOAN Sherri 1967 Aug 11
SHENFELD Mary4_baby SLOAN Sherri 1967 Jul 14

Sherri with her maternal grandmother, who raised her.

SHENFELD Mary3_baby SLOAN Sherri 1967 Jul 14SHENFELD Mary_baby SLOAN Sherri 1967 Jul 14

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The complete page from Sherri’s baby book.

Touching Up My Lippy – 10 June 2002

April 28, 2016
Photobooth 45 Year Project (Archive)
12 Comments

photobooth10:06:02

10 June  2002, Nottingham, UK

While living in the UK, I worked for two different teaching agencies. The first one, Protocol, was sending me to some rough and tumble schools where I struggled to stay on top of things. However, it offered free professional development seminars, and god knows I needed them. The Agency was also run by a very nice group of people, so I stuck with them for a year.

This photo strip was taken at Nottingham train station when I was on my way home to Leicester after a Protocol seminar. I had also had a hair cut that afternoon.

Many of the photos in this long series are unremarkable. They make up a photographic album of my adult life, which gives me a lot of pleasure as I add each new photo to the collection. I also love the memories they bring back, when I write about them for this blog.

This strip of photos comes from my series Photobooth 41 Year Project. You can see all the posts that document the series by clicking here. I am still adding to this project using mostly digital booths to create the images. The project is now close to entering its 44th year.

 

 

Two Peas In A Pod

April 20, 2016
Vintage Photobooth
22 Comments

photoboothMoreCatsEyeGlasses02

A favourite, foreign, friend of mine, forages frequently to find fabulous fotos for me. (And now I have exhausted my alliterative skills I will plough on with this post!)

I love most of the people in my photos but some people more than others. What a fabulous pair these two are. My friend’s hypothesis is that they are sisters. My theory is that they are mother and daughter. Their noses and lips closely resemble the other’s, which convinces me that they are, at the very least, related in some way.

Regardless of their relationship to each other, they have a very similar fashion sense. Their hats and lipstick shades seem almost identical. I love the very arty, large silver pendant and cat’s eye glasses worn by the older woman.The younger woman has a very appealing gap in her teeth and a faraway look in her eyes that reminds me of a young Marilyn Monroe.

Thanks to Ted for his love and dedication to the cause of photobooth photo rescue. I have more gems from him to show you soon.

photoboothMoreCatsEyeGlasses

Cat’s Eyes

April 16, 2016
Vintage Photobooth
5 Comments

photoboothCatsEyeGlasses01

I don’t know about you lot, but these are the most outrageous cat’s eye glasses I have ever seen! These sharply geometric, black-rimmed sunglasses are edged with different sized diamantés. They are bling with attitude. The young lady is also wearing a very cool, paisley variation, print dress. I imagine it to be coloured in purple and orange, making a fittingly groovy ensemble with the glasses. I love her cheeky smile!

Below is a second young woman wearing another fine pair of cool cat sunnies. Around her neck is a chain, on which hangs a gold or silver ring and she is posing as a fashion model of the time might have posed. You have style, girl!

These two photos came from the same online seller in the USA. Unfortunately the quality of the bottom image isn’t so good, but those fab frames deserved a place in this post. Both photos are undated, however I think they are both from the early 1960s

photoboothCatsEyeGlasses02

Une Grand-mère Douce

April 15, 2016
Vintage Photobooth
10 Comments

photoboothFrenchGrandma 1

This photo from France depicts possibly the oldest person I have yet found in a photobooth image. This sweet grandmotherly woman has a kindly look to her eyes. There is a serenity to her that I like very much.

Around her neck is a choker, on which hangs a framed photograph of a young man. I suppose it could be a young woman, but the lack of any visible adornment, such as a hat, jewellery or decorated collar, leads me to conclude that it is not. She is wearing a printed blouse and there is also what appears to be a brooch in the vee of her coat collar. She has an understated elegance that suggests to me that she was a woman of great style in her youth.

Assuming the choker is truly black, and not just a dark colour that appears black in a monochrome print, one can also assume her coat is black. Is she in mourning? I would say this photo was taken sometime in the 1930s. Is the young man a son who died in WW1? Maybe he is a long dead husband? At her advanced age, and in this era of higher mortality than today, she must have experienced death with a frequency that we cannot now imagine.

I feel that she has experienced life’s vicissitudes with magnanimity and a sense of adventure. What must she have thought about being ushered into a curtained, dark, tiny booth to be photographed by an invisible camera?

photobothFrenchGrandmotherDetail

Go Analogue, Digital Is Dead – The Art of Marco Ferrari

April 9, 2016
Photobooth Art
7 Comments
SELFPORTRAIT_detail_03

Marco Ferrari – Self Portrait

Photobooth artist Marco Ferrari has work featured in the book  Photomaton by Raynal Pellicer. Only a limited amount of his photography is shown there, so it was a great discovery when I found an abundance of his pictures on Instagram. Marco works with many different analogue cameras, (Go Analogue, Digital Is Dead is his motto), but his greatest passion is making work in photobooths. He has his own colour booth in Italy, but as he is now based in the UK, he needs to look outside his studio to make his booth images. In an ongoing project, Inked, Marco uses public, black and white photobooths to create stunning portraits of people and their body art. Marco loves photobooths so much, he even commissioned a tattoo of one. (See the bottom of this post.)

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You can read more about Marco’s work on the My Cheap Camera blog by clicking here. If you click here, you will see a large collection of his photobooth, photographic explorations. Finally, if you would like to purchase any of his work, he sells beautiful prints of his favourite images at Big Cartel, here.

 

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Congratulations!

April 6, 2016
Random Posts
13 Comments

photobooth1000Followers

  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!

photoboothPennyBaby

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. . .