POINT OF VIEW
BOOMER LIFE
by Annette Kurman
Do you remember dropping a quarter into the machine and you and your friends cramming into one of these photobooths? Do you still have those photo strips hanging around in a box in the basement? Or perhaps you were at a holiday party recently where they had a “photo booth” where you donned props, and the results were sent right to your Facebook or email?
The patent for the first automated photography machine was filed in 1888. YES, 1888! It probably was never built but still…
The first known really working photographic machine was shown at the 1889 Paris World’s Fair. The coin-operated device could make an exposure and deliver a framed ferrotype — a photo transferred onto a thin sheet of metal — in five minutes. However, the magazine La Nature would write, “A portrait could barely be seen and was often unrecognizable.”
It’s our parents, however, that may recall Russian immigrant Anatol Josepho’s very first photo booth (later featuring a curtain) in New York City in 1925.
Costing $11,000 to make, he named his invention the Photomaton, with the first photo booth appearing on Broadway in New York City near Times Square in 1925, and for 25 cents, the booth took, developed, and printed eight photos, a process taking roughly 10 minutes. It was a booming success right away, making the inventor a fortune and adding pleasure to people’s lives.
According to reports, when it first opened, people were standing all the way around the block. Time magazine reported that 280,000 customers entered the three booths in the first six months,” waiting hours for a chance to have their image captured in a photo. The Photomaton Company was established to place booths nationwide and the photo booth phenomenon had begun.
His Times Square studio saw him taking more than 7,000 photos a day. Open until 4 a.m., the Photomaton Studio had three photo booths with attendants and attracted thousands of customers in its first months of business. People wound all the way around the block waiting for hours at the chance to have their likeness captured.
His invention of an automatic picture booth allowed him to make $1 million, equivalent to $14 million today, when he sold the rights to Henry Morgenthau Sr. The new owners took the design to a factory in Queens and started mass production.
Photomatons soon began to pop up across the country. A Photomaton concession placed next to the Strand Theatre on Broadway in 1932 was so successful it kept the owner’s extended family employed throughout the Great Depression. At the cost of a quarter ($3.50 in today’s money), you would receive a strip of eight images – of you, a loved one, you and a loved one – in a process that took roughly eight minutes.
With the Photomaton, many competitors and innovations entered the scene. Features were added, such as printing the year, or the name of the location where the photobooth was located. Novelties like having your picture taken while sitting on a scale so you could have a record of your weight, and accessories like different-sized prints or frames could be sold with the photo. Many knockoffs were created, such as the Phototeria, which used photodiscs instead of strips.
Other companies popped up with names like Auto-Photo-Dome, The Quartermatic, the Photoweigh Machine, the Movie of You, the Tru-Photo Machine, American Photure Co., the Automatic Film Machine Corporation and the Photola Photosnap.
The Photomaton printed in black-and-white; it would take another 40 years before the photo booth was able to offer color photos. And, of course, it took a while after that before “digital” and “social media posts” became a part of common photo booth language, with photo booths appearing at social gatherings such as office parties, weddings, bar mitzvahs, pool parties, or holiday gatherings. Today, anyone who uses a photo booth can instantly share their photos with millions of people around the globe, courtesy of social media. (Have you been to a wedding recently?)
The original Photomaton was eventually bought by William Rabkin. Rabkin’s Mutoscope Photomatic eventually became the Deluxe Photomat with what Boomer may recall as four images on strips, reducing the number of images down from eight, which is why we still have four images on 2×6 strips today.
Rabkin’s company was eventually outdone by one called Auto-Photo, which stopped trying to sell the booths and started renting them to department stores and malls.
Within the next few decades following its introduction in New York, photo booths spread across the United States, Canada, and Europe; whenever they popped up, people flocked to them. That included everyone from regular folks to actors, celebrities, and even presidents.
In the ’50s, everybody took photos in a photobooth, including Boomers. See JFK and Jackie Kennedy on their honeymoon and Elvis as a young (and thin!) man.
Surprisingly, artists became fascinated with photo booths. Surrealist Salvador Dali and film director Luis Bunuel produced self-portraits using photo booths. Artist Andy Warhol incorporated photo booths into his art in the ‘60s.
Whether used for amusement or art, the popularity of the photo booth continued to increase throughout the 20th century. Floodlights were replaced with strobes and black-and-white inks replaced with color.
Prior to 1968, photo booths required an attendant who would adjust the lens and recommend how people should pose for their pictures. In 1968, users could start operating the photo booth themselves!
In the ’70s, Polaroid slowed the photobooth industry; the ability to take larger pictures of varying backgrounds, and have them printed instantly, was revolutionary. These prints meant that the photobooth was, for a time, on the decline. Users began to think of them as passport photo-taking tools, but that would change quickly.
By the 1970s, improved technology saw the introduction of color photos and in the 1990s, the photo booth entered the high-tech age when a company called Photo-Me introduced digital color photo booths using a computer to print the strips.
In the mid-1990s, Photo-Me released the digital, color photo booth into production. Yet, people still love the old black-and-white chemical booths – when you can find them. True vintage photo booths are difficult to come by. Spare parts and the specially treated paper have been disconnected making them collector’s items. But if you’re ever in NYC, you can still find an authentic booth or two hiding in the corners of hotels, shops and restaurants – back where it all began.
Until the early 2000s the local American or Canadian shopping center or strip mall was one of the few places you would find a photo booth. Around the world they were far better known as sources of amusement in arcades and train or bus stations. The most common use for the machine was for passport and ID prints.
Thankfully, in the early 2000s with the development and application of digital printers and more portable components, the photo booth finally got its freedom. Before long the photo booth hire industry was born. For the first time, event holders could bring the once cumbersome photo booth into their chosen location as a source of fun new entertainment for weddings, parties, school proms and corporate events. Stylish, cheeky, and clever images started to appear between drinks, dances, awards announcements, and mingling. And the guests loved it!
In the USA and Canada, the very first photo booth rental companies started around the mid-2000s. Since then, the industry has boomed like no other and as of 2017 there are more than 15,000 photo booth rental companies across North America.
That’s a hell of a lot of photo-strips!
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A TIMELINE
1889: The first known photo machine was featured at the World Fair in Paris. This coin-operated device would develop a ferrotype, a photo transferred onto a thin sheet of metal, in about five minutes.
1896: First automatic photo machine with a negative and positive process invented in Germany.
1925: Russian immigrant Anatol Josepho built the first curtain-enclosed photo booth in New York City. After creating a successful prototype, Josepho opened Photomaton Studio on Broadway, which had three photo booths with attendants and attracted thousands of customers in its first months of business. For 25 cents, people could get a strip of eight photos in about eight minutes. Photo booths spread throughout the United States after this success. “A March 1927 headline of The New York Times read: ‘Slot Photo Device Brings $1,000,000 to Young Inventor.’ The deal, worth $12 million today, also guaranteed future royalties for his invention,” according to Behind the Curtain: A History of the Photobooth by Mark Block.
1927: Photo booths spread to Canada and Europe.
1958: Auto-Photo Model 11 Photo Booth was developed for ID, police, and prison mug shots. It had no curtain and included a number beside each photo on the strip.
1960s: Andy Warhol began manipulating photo booth portraits in his artwork, the first artist to do so. He kept hundreds of photo booth strips of friends and muses, reinterpreting the black and white pictures with color, enlarging, and line drawings.
1965: Mike Abella, founder of 1000 Words visits his first photo booth with big brother Steve.
1968: Users could operate the photo booth themselves—up until this point an attendant would adjust the lens and help people pose for their pictures.
1970s: Introduction of color photo strips.
1990s: Photo-Me starts marketing digital color photo booths that used a computer to print strips faster.
Today: With today’s technology, photo booths are as fun as ever, with a wide variety of options for printing, sharing, and utilizing at all types of events. After all, a picture’s worth 1000 Words!
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REFERENCES
https://www.photoboothfun.co.nz/fun-photo-booth-facts-know/
https://www.thephotoboothfinder.com/photo-booth-history
https://1000wordsevents.com/snaps-through-history-origins-of-the-photo-booth/
https://coolhunting.com/culture/andy-warhol-photobooth-portraits/
http://www.photoboothus.com/model-11-photo-booth/
http://www.panmodern.com/photobooth.htm
https://www.ataphotobooths.com/uncategorized/a-brief-but-fascinating-history-of-photo-booths/
https://www.ataphotobooths.com/shop/
https://boothmasters.com/blog/the-history-of-photobooths/
http://gizmodo.com/5837674/photojojos-beautifully-restored-70s-polaroid-is-worth-the-300
https://www.ataphotobooths.com/uncategorized/a-brief-but-fascinating-history-of-photo-booths/
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/14/arts/14expl.html
https://boothmasters.com/blog/the-history-of-photobooths/
https://home.curatorlive.com/a-brief-history-of-the-photo-booth/
https://cutabovephoto.com/taking-a-look-back-the-history-of-photo-booths/
You can reach Annette Kurman at annette.kurman@gmail.com
