A while back, Michael VanDenBergh from Image Dynamics sent me some
excellent photobooth history. It took me such a long time to
get it up on the site that Michael took it upon himself to create a
page for it. After you finish reading the Bern Boyle essay below,
check out Michael's stuffThe following essay was written by Bern Boyle for the exhibit catalogue from an actual photobooth art exhibit that took place in the East Village, NYC, in 1987. I found a copy of the catalogue at a little shop across from Tomkins Square Park. No, I don't have permission to reprint this here. I've searched around the Net for the author, but with no luck. Please, if anyone knows Bern, or any of the artists he mentions below, please mail me!
PHOTOBOOTH HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT
Automation is an integral part of 20th-century life. One of its most familiar manifestations, the vending machine originated shortly before the turn of the century.
In 1883, Percival Everett invented the first commercially viable coin-operated vending machine. For many products, sales people became unnecessary and by 1887, the Adam Gum Company had installed machines that sold Tutti-Frutti on at the El platforms in New York City. Vending became a craze, and machines, which dispensed everything from postcards to seltzer, sprang up across America and Europe.
Mathew Stiffens filed his patent for an automatic photography machine in 1889, the same year that Monsieur Enjalbert demonstrated a similar machine at the Exposition Universelle in Paris Producing tintypes for use as souvenirs, ID s and tokens of affection, this type of machine proliferated until after World War 1. The machines were never totally self-operative and failed because of coin jams and their need for frequent chemical changes and repairs.
The photographic product these machines produced was considered second-rate compared to the more desirable albumin and platinum prints which were costly and required the services of a professional photographer and studio. These tintypes were stiff and awkward in addition to being difficult to view in many lighting situations. Nevertheless thousands upon thousands were produced. Tintypes were cheap and easy, portraits of the masses...much like the modern photobooth portraits which came later.
The field of photography progressed, technological advances continued, and in 1925 Anatol Josepho, a Socialist from Siberia, patented his 'Photomaton.' An automatic photography machine, the Photomaton produced a strip of 8 photographs of good quality in 8 minutes. The inventor had drawn up his plans for the machine while traveling across China as an itinerant photographer, refined his technical prowess in Hollywood, built the prototype in a Harlem loft and set up his first photobooth studio at Broadway and 51st Street in New York City.
In 1927, the enterprising Josepho, 33 years old, achieved the Great American Dream by selling the rights to his invention for the considerable sum of $1,000,000, The buyers were a group of businessmen planning to establish 70 of these mechanical studios at Coney Island, Atlantic City and strategic points throughout the United States by the end of the first year, hoping to "do in the photographic field what Woolworth has accomplished in novelties", reported the Edison Monthly (October, 1926): "Even such New York celebrities as Governor "Al" Smith and the senator-elect, Robert F. Wagner, have taken their turn in the Broadway shop, adjusting their hats and cigars to different angles for each exposure. But beyond serving as a toy for the inquisitive, the machine will probably become very common as a source of portraits for chauffeurs' licenses, passports, and such uses."
Josepho, a fascinating character, planned to give half of his million dollars to set up a foundation devoted to philanthropic works but our research has not yet uncovered what became of the foundation or the inventor of the Photomaton.
From Photo Era magazine (December, 1927): "You need no longer be dull in Boston if you have twenty-five cents and a face. Go to the new Photomaton, in Filene's basement, some noon and see how romance and adventure have been injected into the hitherto grim business of having your pictures made.
The Photomaton - someone should think up a more sprightly name for it! - automatically takes and develops eight pictures of you in eight minutes. I, alas, lack the technical equipment to describe the process, but I can stand witness to the extraordinarily enlivening effect it has on the hordes who gather to try it.
From twelve to one is the busiest time for the Photomaton. Then the attendants at the three booths become automatons, herding the prospects in one line with one hand, guiding the immediate sitter with another, while muttering directions to both. Into the booths slip wearied suburban shoppers, with packages dangling from every finger, "on their lunch-hour," young men who will not be parted from their caps, photo or no photo, and whose mouths are a glitter of gold. One by one they take their places under the spotlight, smile widely from left to right and straight, and at last join the waiters by the picture-slot. It s as exciting as a rollercoaster at a seashore amusement Park or an airplane ride. . . As to the pictures? I have been frequently and expensively photographed, with mellow lights, and shaded lights, soft-focus cameras and the rest of it ... For me, the little bird in the camera has always been cuckoo. The photomaton restored my tottering self-respect."
Not much has changed since then. Many of the black and white machines that are still around look as if they're leftovers from a past era. The quick, cheap, and easy photo they produce seems a throwback too. "Photography takes the human form, sitting hot upright, without effort to soften or improve. Art comes in, add behold!"
Edward Estabrooke
'The Ferrotype and How to Make It' (1872)
Estabrooke's quote aptly applies to a I the artists in this show who have taken photographic technology, in this case the photobooth, and adapted it to their particular vision.
In the ear y 1960s, Andy Warhol began using photobooth portraits in artwork. He would blow the strips up and silkscreen them in various colors and patterns. Warhol elevated to the level of 'Art' what had previously been seen as commonplace and mundane. Popular culture's artifacts became fine art, Warhol was perhaps the first to use the photobooth in this way.
The medium of the photobooth lends itself to personal art ... a perfect vehicle for the artist who enjoys working in private. Strange to think of the photobooth as private ... set in public spaces as it is, in train stations and bus depots, in arcades and Woolworth's stores..... but when the curtain is drawn you are finally alone. No viewer other than yourself. The intimate studio versus the public thoroughfare...a tension that can excite and stimulate.
Imagine all the lonely people with their dreams and fantasies, photographing themselves as they would have others see them, acting out ... alone. From the 1920s onward, photobooths have been spewing out millions at strips. Hopefully, these gems will now begin to be salvaged from the boxes and scrapbooks where they have been all these years.
The photobooth machine, with its limitations, is nonetheless capable of tremendous yet cry. The 13 artists whose works comprise this exhibit each have their unique perspective, but certain themes and approaches have presented themselves. Self-portraiture is the most obvious theme... the machine was designed with this purpose in mind. And photobooth artists must either work with the self-portrait, or purposely avoid it.
There is an appreciation of found photographs and portraits of strangers in much of the work, Jared Bark has created documents of various American cities through his series of portraits, and George Berticevich has done much the same thing at state fairs. Aerosol has stolen work from strangers, Susan Hit at has collected strips and imitated the gestures of unknown sitters, and Sandy Wassenmiller has photographed them in and around the photobooth machines at Coney Island. Claire Connors and Hernan Costa are compiling the Times Square Project, combining portraits and edited interviews of people from that ultimate urban crossroads. Liz Rideal collaborated with over 1,000 people for her 'Identity' piece, asking them to disguise or reveal their true identity in a strip.
Figure studies form a certain percentage of the work of Costa, Berticevich, Koplowitz and Taback, each focusing on a different aspect of the figure, at rest or in motion. Photographing nudes presents obvious problems when working in public. One solution is to buy a booth and move it to your studio. Taback, Berticevich, and Bark did so...Costa hopes to. Another use of the photobooth machine is as a drawing tool. Repetition, pattern, mosaic and grid (Costa, Koplowitz, Boyle, Berticevich, and Taback), although used photographically, can be seen in this light. The techniques of Aerosol and Rideal further extend this idea of drawing. Jef Aerosol projects the photobooth image, cuts a stencil from the enlarged self-portraits and spray paints them as graffiti in wild colors and positions, while retaining the essence of photobooth. Liz Rideal uses the strips to build her giant megaportraits, using each tiny strip as a piece in her photographic mosaic.
Margaret Fox and Herman Costa have brought co facts into the photobooth and photographed them in a space traditionally used for portraiture Fox has created romantic surrealistic fantasies. Costa. when not experimenting with new photobooth techniques, has produced still-lifes reminiscent of Muybridge's motion studies. Dorothy Handeleman's matchbox layering, the only 3-dimensional work in the show, stands alone.
Re-photographing and coloring interest Hiller, Bark, Berticevich and Aerosol. Susan Hiller enlarges photobooth images and paints on them. Berticevich rephotographs and hand-tints and both he and Jared Bark have altered the chemicals used in their booths' developing process to create special sepia tones in printing.
Several artists have used the booth to photograph itself and Bark and Berticevich have brought televisions into the booth to photograph sports events and cartoons respectively, adding new layers of time and meaning.
Artists love the photobooth for its immediacy...art in five minutes, It also has an element of nostalgia. Today, things are changing. There are still streamlined, curved photobooths around producing strips of four black and white pictures, but many machines are being converted to color or abandoned for the square format color machines We now have machines that will videotape you and your friends and machines that will give you a roll of 35mm film ready to process instead of the traditional photos!
Throughout this exhibit, we've attempted to call attention to the diverse images created with the photobooth machine ... at a time when its future seems in question.
Bern Boyle
November, 1987