The Art of Photo Booths

Taking a group photo today is as simple as pressing a button, and sharing it with friends is just as easy.

Of course, taking a picture with others wasn’t always this fast and effortless. After all, the sort of early 19th-century photograph that featured stoic faces and stiff postures was like that for a reason, mainly long exposure times. Around the turn of the 20th century, however, photography became more casual, with the introduction of the Kodak camera and the invention of the photo booth. The Getty Museum captures a piece of this latter development with a wide collection of photo booth images, many from the 1930s to the 1960s.

The classic summer boardwalk staple didn’t always look how it does today, either in its method or machinery. From shaky beginnings all the way to their influence on the modern selfie, photo booths have lived many lives and spawned various trends. But where did they come from exactly, and are they still relevant in today’s digital age?

A humble contraption

In 1889, French inventor T. E. Enjalbert created the first known photography machine, which was shown at the World’s Fair in Paris the same year. At this point, however, photo booths were not reliably self-sufficient, nor were they particularly reminiscent of modern-day examples.

Anatol Josepho is credited with originating the modern concept of a photo booth, named Photomaton, with the first appearing near Times Square in New York in September 1925, a few years after he came to the United States from Russia. The original booth cost 25 cents to use and took eight photos, which required around eight to 10 minutes to print.

In its first six months, around 280,000 people used the booth. Between 1927 and 1928, the Photomaton Company was created to place booths nationwide, paying Josepho $1 million with the promise of royalties. He pledged to put half of the original million in a trust for charity and use the other half to support other inventors.

The purikura craze

Other types of popular photo booths proliferated, printing passport pictures, postcards, and other memorabilia with personalized images. There is even a three-dimensional photo booth at the Hague, which creates a physical model from the two-dimensional picture. No type of photo booth, however, had quite as much impact as purikura.

Purikura, short for “Print Club” in Japanese, are arcade booths that produce decorated photo stickers. For ¥300 (about $2), a person can pose for a photo, add cutesy decorations on the digital screen, and walk away with around 16 photo stickers a minute later. Sasaki Miho came up with the idea in 1994, inspired by her old school notebooks that she would decorate with stickers of Japanese characters.

In 1995, the first purikura were introduced through a collaboration between video game developers Atlus and Sega in Japanese arcades. While sales were slow at first, a 1996 television campaign from the boy band SMAP promoting Print Club increased demand, with over 45,000 purikura booths installed in a variety of locations across Japan by the summer of 1997.

Taking pictures at purikura was an incredibly social activity, bringing women to Japanese arcades like never before. The machines are typically more spacious than traditional photo booths, typically accommodating around six people. Because of the general marketing aim and popularity with younger women and girls, however, purikura became targets for harassment, with some locations implementing bans on male-only groups.

The idea of the original machines was to add effects designed to look kawaii—an aesthetic centering on youthful cuteness—but it has since expanded to include dark or edgier subcultures, among others. More than that, purikura led to the modern selfie. Japanese mobile phones introduced front-facing cameras in 1999 to capitalize on the success of purikura, with apps like Instagram and Snapchat later embracing the booths’ style of filters throughout the early 2010s.

The digital era

Most photo booths today are digital instead of utilizing automatic cameras, as in Josepho’s invention. And increasing interest in rental photo booths for special occasions like weddings, graduations, and other big events took off in the United States in the early 2000s. In fact, between 2005 and 2012, more people searched online to rent a photo booth than hire a DJ, with Los Angeles alone having over 600 photo booth rental companies. One, Photomatica, also has three photo booth museums, in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Houston.

Beyond commercial use, photo booths also can be employed artistically, notably with Andy Warhol’s Photo Booth Self-Portrait series (1960–65). The pictures demonstrate his view of popular culture as a valid way to make art, with the photo booth allowing for pieces that were both controlled and spontaneous.

Beyond rentals, photo booths can still be found in many arcades and malls and at high-profile events and tourist destinations. Besides the many rental companies in Los Angeles, permanent photo booths can be found everywhere in Southern California, from the Third Street Promenade and Roxy Theatre to the Grand Central Market and, of course, the Photomatica Photo Booth Museum on Sunset Boulevard.

Photo booths still make their way into today’s popular media, appearing in everything from the film Paddington in Peru to reality television’s Love Island villa. Even the Apple App Store’s classic Photo Booth, still available since its introduction in 2005, combines the classic multi-photo view with the more recent addition of filters and stylized editing. Books have been written about photo booths, and Canadian artist Meags Fitzgerald is creating a documentary about how they've been used by LGBTQ people called Picture Yourself: A Photobooth Love Story. So, even if physical media images fall out of fashion, photo booths will always have a place in photographic and social media history.