I have an intense obsession when it comes to vintage style photo booths. I'm not at all bothered by the ones that are for passport suitable prints (where you can't even think about smiling), but the ones that take four different prints are brilliant and a ridiculous amount of fun. I find them romantic; I used to think that if I ever had my photo taken in a photo booth with a boy it would be the epitome of romance.
Although I was obsessed for a long time, it wasn't until 2009 on a road trip from Oregon to British Colombia that I found the kind of photo booth I was looking for. My enthusiasm was so apparent that my friends allowed me to keep the original prints, just so I would shut up about it.
There have been a few photo booth encounters since. We found this photo booth at Larmer Tree Festival in 2013, after our performance (www.thespitfiresisters.co.uk, www.facebook.com/TheSpitfireSisters). This photo booth came with a challenge - swap your props between each photo. Hilarity ensued.
I adore this print taken at a killer party last year - we totally monopolised this booth all night. I have so many sets of photos from this evening, but this one is my favourite:
There are some wonderfully iconic prints from surprising participants of photo booth pictures. Recently, Vanity Fair published a print from a photo booth of John F. Kennedy and Jackie Kennedy that is believed to be from their honeymoon.
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/01/presidents-portfolio-200901_slideshow_item7_8
It was Anatol Josepho who invented the photo booth in New York in 1925. Näkki Goranin, the author ofAmerican Photobooth, wrote in an article for The Telegraph that 'By September 1925 [...] as many as 7,500 people a day [...] would line up to have their photos taken for 25 cents for a strip of eight [...] The New York governor and a senator were among those waiting for the fun of the automatic photo strip' Personal photographs became cheap, accessible, and outrageously popular, but appealed to everyone, including politicians.
Our lives are so well recorded now through social media and camera phones that photo booths can feel like surplus documentation, but there is something about the history of photo booths and their longevity that makes them feel special.
You can find Näkki Goranin's article entitled The History of the Photobooth at:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/donotmigrate/3671736/The-history-of-the-photobooth.html.