Photoautomat: Berlin / Glasgow
Trongate 103
22nd August - 21st August 2027
“These are not the digital passport booths found in every shopping mall, train station and airport, rather, they are refurbished analogue booths, still producing chemical-based prints. Collecting these little photo strip mementoes of each of my trips to Berlin became a ritual. As I waited for up to five minutes for the images to be processed and delivered, I would get chatting with random strangers also waiting to use the machines. I realised that, for me, these booths symbolized all I celebrated about the camera. The booths themselves were giant cameras that had the power to bring strangers together for a fleeting moment in time but the fact that I had to travel to another country to use them, symbolized how the camera has acted as a passport in my personal life, giving me a reason to cross physical and social borders or boundaries.” - Simon Murphy
2025 marked 100 years since Anatol Josepho patented the Photomaton, the first modern photobooth. Photobooths were installed on Broadway, New York and instantly changed the role of photography in the world. They offered an alternative to the studio portrait, in particular the static and serious genre of portraiture that endured from the origins of wet plate studio portraiture for the wealthy. Now everyone had access to their own private play booths.
Photobooths became an everyday sight in cities around the world in the 1950s and 1960s, they were loved by everyone and attracted artists as a form of instant self-expression - the surrealists in particular loved it, it represented modernity, it was fast, it was easy and it was cheap. Literally putting the means of creative expression into everyone’s reach.
As you draw the curtain, you can play any character or version of yourself within the privacy of this small theatre. Photobooths are the original selfie makers.
In the digital realm of filters and unlimited opportunities to delete and redo there is something liberating in the harsh, finite four flash moments that are captured forever in a pocket-sized strip from these analogue booths. It captures blinks, mistakes, bad angles and miscalculated poses with the same permanence as the perfect moment. This element of chance and luck are it’s appeal; after a four minute wait, we get something real in our hands - unpredictable, imperfect and glorious.
Photoautomat: Berlin / Glasgow is an ongoing independent and unfunded project by Simon Murphy in partnership with Photoautomat Berlin and Street Level Photoworks. With thanks to Ole Kretschmann and Asger Doenst for their hard work and cooperation in building the booth for Glasgow.
Images: © Simon Murphy
