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The photomaton was invented in 1925 in New York by the Siberian immigrant Anatol Josepho, as a ploy to make photography more accessible to the public: located near Times Square, attracted 280,000 visitors in six months and produced eight photographs for 25 cents. At the end of World War II, there were more than 30,000 commercial positions in the United States, coinciding with the emergence of mass tourism and a new demand for passport photos. Amado by artists from Breton to Buñuel to Warhol, who delighted with his self -reflective nature, they retained their popularity to the cameras of aiming and firing and the polaroid instantaneous photograph He took over.
Today they are returning. Autofoto, a company dedicated to the rescue and restoration of old machines around the world, operates 19 brand positions between London and Barcelona, where it is located. The director and founder Rafael Hortala Vallve bought his first stand in 2009 for a friend’s wedding. He arrived from Montreal, of origin for a time when many operators changed to digital. “My adolescence had passed running off -road motorcycles in Catalonia and knew basic mechanical maintenance,” he says. (That first machine is your favorite: now in a study in Hackney Bridge, it was used for the accessory session on these pages).
The number of images taken in the self -phase machines, says Hortala Vallve, increased 50 percent each year since 2022, despite an ongoing broadcasting paper caused by the invasion of Ukraine of Russia of Ukraine (up to 2020, the Slavich of Russia was the only producer of photographic documents used for the cabins and the highest sensitivity is still Alternative alternatives of the alternative alternative, and still boasts.
To celebrate the Centenary of the Stand, the company has planned several activations, from an emerging window at the Arles Photography Festival to a Love Booth installation in Ramsgate, exploring its history as a vehicle for social connection. In autumn, London Photographers It will organize an exhibition dedicated to the cabin. “The Photobooth was a change of game for the world of photography,” says Clare Grafik, exhibition leaders. “It represented the mass democratization of portraits photography. Its real and lasting impact was like a personal space for people to be in charge of their own images. The imperfections and peculiarities of the analog process were part of fun.”
“The beauty of the stand is that technology has remained the same for almost a century,” explains Hortala Vallve; Their machines still use the original xenon gas flashes and expose the frame directly to the photographic paper, which makes each one. “The photographic strips have the same quality as the images as Andy Warhol or Cindy Sherman took in the 1970s, or the surrealists made in the 1920s. They work better when they are constantly used.”
Shot using the self -fotoophoth in Hackney Bridge. Model, Londone Myers in the next London. Casting, Piergiorgio del Moro and Helena Balladino in DM casting. Cabello, Maarit Niemela at Agency 41 using Amika. Makeup, Dan Delgado using Chanel. Manicura, Jasmin Samavati in one represents the use of YSL. Stylist Assistant, Susie Lethbridge. A special thanks to Taha Izzi in Autophoto