This is an unusual polaroid photobooth set. It isn’t in the greatest of conditions but due to its rarity it is worth documenting.
I am not sure if polaroid photobooths still exist. They were certainly never common. This photo is from the USA and has no identifying information. I guess it dates from the 1990s.
13 January 1998, Spencer Street Station, Melbourne
This strip was taken on the way to see a movie in Melbourne’s city centre. It was The Devil’s Advocate with Al Pacino. I hated it.
This strip is part of the series Photobooth 41 Year Project. You can see all the posts that document the series by clicking here.
The one that got away.
The one that I bought.
This wonderful young woman, Drene, appeared in numerous photos that were recently for sale on Ebay. I tried, to the extremes of my finances, to get the top photo, but missed out. I was luckier for number two.
Isn’t she a 60s Goth-Girl stunner? Did they even have Goths back then? I often look back on my youthful conservative style and wish I had had more courage to be different. This girl had no such inhibitions.
The photo I bought has “To Adele love Drene 1/11/1964” written on the back. It comes from the USA.
Great faces on these two, eh? They must have been great friends to squeeze into a booth together. I wonder if they made the strip for their wives whilst on a trip to the city? They certainly look like country blokes.
This photo comes from the USA and is undated.
I love the way this kid chooses the second frame for his breakout performance and then resumes his Read More
Through this blog I have come across other photobooth enthusiasts who share their photos online.
Meg from Denver, Colorado lives in France. At her blog De Quelle Planète Est-Tu? (What planet are you from?) she blogs about her travels and her life in Paris. She is very fond of automatic photo machines.
Below is a selection of some of the great photos from her archive of photobooth related posts, which you can see in full by clicking here.
Many thanks to Meg for permission to share these.
Unidentified lady in 1950s photobooth strip from Germany. It was listed as Stripe of Young Woman, which is appropriate given the visual effect of the backdrop curtain.
I bought this strip of photos from Ebay (of course!) but this one is sentimentally special because it was posted to me at my address in New York City, when I had an apartment there on Beekman Place. For two whole months I was a resident of that great city, with my own place, a gym membership, a favourite local diner and a cool local friend called Kelly.
These two are having a good laugh in what appears to be a relatively recent photobooth strip. I can only imagine how this ended up being sold online so soon after its creation. Was it one of those not-quite-perfect sets that ended up discarded on the ground, prey to someone like me, who loves a found photo?
This is another lady whose beautiful face and eyes draw me in. She is from Germany and given the cloche hat the date of the photos must be the 1920s.
This series of eight photos (many of the earlier booths took eight consecutive shots rather than the four we see today) is unusual due to all the original number being present. They look to be perfect for an animated gif but I thought I would try the slideshow option to see how that looked. If you hover over the image a control bar appears and you can fast forward through the images to get a bit of an animated feel. The original photos are below.
Photobooth Journal 