These two strips of undated photos from my mysterious French lady show her with the second and last of her lovers in the series of photos in my collection. Is this the man she stayed with? She certainly looks very happy with him.
I first met Rosie in London, when she was 7 years old. I was one of the many boarders from around the world that her mum took in. Although none of the above photos are dated, the second pic is how I remember her looking at that age. Ros came to visit me in Australia when she was 16, for a one month stay and we catch up via email and whenever I visit London. I think of her as my second little sister and love her dearly. When she was ten or eleven she gave me a new nick name, Kitty. Ros was the first person to call me that, which I found delightful! She more often calls me Kit-Kat these days.
Now in her early thirties, Ros is newly married and a successful academic. She still has the same cheeky sparkle in her eyes that she did when she was little.
Part of my fascination with photobooth photos is that they are one of very few types of informal photography that consistently isolates the image almost exclusively to the sitter’s head and shoulders. Therefore any changes to the person that have happened over time are immediately apparent. The images condense these changes over a period of months, years or decades and each set becomes a personal time machine. Sometimes the changes, from one shot to another, are minute or only apparent in changing modes of clothing, hair and occasionally, make-up. In other sequences of photos, the jump from one image to the next could be twenty years or more, showing the ravages of time or the subtly developing features of experience and maturity, depending on your perspective.
The category Photobooth Images 1973 to Present is my time machine. For everyone else, I have a new category showcasing small progressions of change over time, of friends, family and other unidentified people from my vintage collection as they grow, develop and evolve.
Here is my lovely French lady once again. I gave up trying to guess what order the photos were taken, so have just selected them randomly. I don’t think it really matters what order we see them in. She is photogenic and interesting in any of her snaps, no matter when they were shot. There are two more strips to show you before the big reveal about how she came back into my life. Stay tuned!
These are the last two strips of my beguiling femme fatale. Tomorrow I will conclude this series with how ma belle dame mystérieuse re-entered my life earlier this year.
October 2011
October 2011
There are now many different types of photobooth offering a huge array of options for your pics. My brother and sister-in-law, niece and nephew brought this one back for me from their first trip to Europe. I love the way the whole family squeezed in. They were somewhere in France, I think. I am thrilled they thought of me while there and remembered my photobooth addiction. They also gave me a luxurious, pink, heart-shaped gift-tin of delicious Fauchon chocolates. How spoilt am I?
I love the sepia toning of the colours, possibly produced due to blocked lights from so many people squishing in. What a wonderful effect the repetition has on the image, though we couldn’t figure out why it would come without the removable sticker feature you normally get with this format.
20/02/1994
February 1994, France
When this photo was taken in Argenteuil, which is just outside Paris, I had been studying French for 4 months. It has been so long since I used that language that every word I drag from my memory, I now doubt. Is “vivant la bonne vie” the correct way to saying “living the good life”? No matter, as I really was! Living as a student again, so soon after the experiences of Guatemala, was a great joy. I was meeting wonderful people, speaking mostly French and flying through my exams with top marks, not to mention the availability of wonderful culinary indulgences that the country has to offer. To supplement my income I was again making greeting cards, but instead of spruiking my wares to gift shops, I found a ready market in my fellow students.
This photo was taken on my way to visit a family friend of Del Holbrook, Georges. I bought the tulips for him and gave him one of the photos from the strip in exchange for one of his photobooth photos.
October 1993, Annecy
I started my French lessons in Annecy on the 4th of October. I boarded with Madame and Monsieur Petit in Seynod, just outside Annecy. They were an amazing couple. Raymond had asked his wife Rolande to marry him when they were reasonably young, then took 12 years to agree to a wedding date. By the time they were married it was too late for them to have their own children, so they started fostering. They had raised over twenty kids, some from babies. All had grown up by the time I arrived. Needless to say they had plenty of room to accommodate foreign guests.
This photo was taken at the train station on the day I was dropped there by the coach from London, while I waited to be collected by the Petits.
October 1993
Early October 1993, London
I have written only “October 1993 French Visa Photo” on the back of this image. In reality it must have been taken in September as my visa was dated from late that month. Moana was still in Guatemala and as always, was a brilliant correspondent. I spent a lot of time with Helen White and was also in contact with some friends, Doug and Jay, who Moana and I had met in Guatemala. I was back to making and selling my hand made greeting cards and worked at Liberty up until two days before my departure by coach for Annecy.
I was thrilled to be the only bidder on this rare photobooth lenticular photo. It is made up of three exposures taken in succession on the same frame. The frame is placed under a lined sheet of acetate and when tilted appears to show movement.
In this example the lady’s eyes shift from the centre, then to the side and her mouth opens and closes. It is unfortunate that in the position needed to make a scan of the image, the sitter looks slightly cross-eyed. What you can see above is actually parts of two of the three individual exposures. For more information about these fabulous booth photos see Näkki Goranin’s book American Photobooth.
Photobooth Journal 