Sepia Saturday 218: Portraits in the Backyard

Reverse of cabinet card by E. Bosotock, Photographer of Schools, & etc.
Erasmus Bostock worked as a photographer in Derby from the mid-1870s, when he was probably apprenticed to William Pearson, one of the town's earliest practitioners, then operating from a studio in St. Peter's Street. [1] In the late 1870s and early 1880s he had a brief partnership with a photographer named Carr, during which time they worked from a studio at number 8 Macklin Street. [2] He established then established an itinerant trade as a "photographer of schools" from c.1882, not the only local to visit schools, but apparently the only one in Derby who advertised it as a speciality. [3]

Over the following decade, he appears to have concentrated on this type of work: of the dozen or so examples of his work from this period that I have hitherto come across, only one is a conventional studio portrait. Between 1891 and 1894 Bostock moved with his family to nearby Nottingham, where he probably took over a studio from Edward Carnell and continued in business until his death in 1919. [4]


Informal cabinet card portrait of unidentified group
Taken by Erasmus Bosotock of Derby, c. mid-1880s
This informal portrait of what is assumed to be a family group taken by Bostock in a suburban backyard therefore departs a little from his usual fare, and is an important clue to how photographers coped with lean times. I have written previously [5,6] of opportunistic photographers who toured residential suburbs, probably during winter months when business was quiet, looking for potential customers who wanted their photos taken in front of their houses or in their gardens. Some of these professionals worked out of established studios, but many left no mark on their card mounts or, if they did, are not traceable through trade directories.

It is interesting, then, to find such a portrait taken by a photographer who, it has already been established, travelled into the residential suburbs and, we now know, was a "door knocker" when the occasion arose. A small tidbit of information about one of Derby's minor photographers it is, but it adds to the developing picture of the common practices in Victorian Britain.


For more backyard beauties visit the rest of this week's Sepia Saturday contributers.

References

[1] Payne, Brett (2009) All lined up in the school playground in their Sunday best, Photo-Sleuth, 18 October 2009.

[2] Payne, Brett (2006) Erasmus Foster Bostock of Macklin Street, Derby & Nottingham, Derbyshire Photographers' Profiles.

[3] Payne, Brett (2008) More photos from St James' Board School, Photo-Sleuth, 14 September 2008.

[4] Payne, Brett (2013) Sepia Saturday 176: Erasmus Bostock, Photographer of Schools &c., Photo-Sleuth, 11 May 2013.

[5] Payne, Brett (2008) The story behind the picture, Photo-Sleuth, 8 April 2008.

[6] Payne, Brett (2013) Sepia Saturday 163: A photographer at the front door, Photo-Sleuth, 7 February 2013.

Sepia Saturday 178: Polyfoto, The Natural Photography

I do appreciate that, for Saturday Sepians at least, sepia is a state of mind rather than a colour, shade or bygone photographic hue, but this week I will share a photograph in the traditionally sepian style from my aunt's family collection.


Lieutenant Charles Leslie Lionel Payne, 1941
Unmounted silver gelatin print (76 x 98mm)
Image © and courtesy of Barbara Ellison
Her father - my grandfather - had served as a machine gunner in the Canadian Expeditionary Force during the Great War but, when the Second World War broke out, at 47 he was a little old to head off abroad, and was commissioned as an officer in the Pioneer Corps. Judging by the number of passport-style shots of my grandfather taken during the war years, he and the rest of the family were rather proud of his achievements, and justifiably so. In early 1942 he was promoted from Lieutenant to the rank of Captain, and by mid-1943 he was Major Payne, Officer Commanding 315 Company at Newport, Monmouthshire.


Reverse of silver gelatin print (76 x 98mm)
Image © and courtesy of Barbara Ellison
The back of an almost identical print has the remains of stamp edging stuck to the four edges, suggesting that it may at one time have been affixed to a mount or frame of some sort. Both this and the previous print have a small number 60 pencilled on the back, in the lower right-hand corner.


Lieutenant Charles Leslie Lionel Payne, 1941
Unmounted silver gelatin prints (each strip 110 x 37mm)
Image © and courtesy of Barbara Ellison
The prints are sepia-toned enlargements of a negative which also resulted in the two strips of 1¼"-square portraits above, and are almost certainly a product of the Polyfoto process. Unfortunately the reverse only has the date 1941 (corrected from 1940) written in blue ink by my grandmother. Derby had its own Polyfoto studio during and after the war, situated first at The Spot, and later in the Midland Drapery Co. Building on the corner of St Peter's and East Streets.


Two portraits of an unidentified woman, undated, estd. c1935-1945
Unmounted silver gelatin Polyfoto prints (37 x 37mm)
Image © and collection of Brett Payne
One of these two similar-sized head-and-shoulders portraits from my own collection fortunately does have the remnants of the manufacturer's name on the back, as well as the number 22 written in purple pencil, although the subject sadly remains anonymous.


The Polyfoto camera, made in England by Kodak Limited, 1933
Image © and courtesy of the National Media Museum
The camera used to produce these photographs was a rather unusual one, employing an automated process which reduced costs dramatically, although it did not, such as with Photomatic photobooths, dispense with the need for an operator. Originally of Danish design, and subsequently manufactured under license in England by Williamson Maunfacturing and Kodak Ltd from 1933, they used a repeating back, a series of 48 half-inch-square exposures being made on a 7" x 5" glass plate negative as a handle on the side was cranked.


Taking portraits in a Polyfoto studio, c.1949
Image © and courtesy of the Polyfoto web site
They were deployed in booths located in all the major towns in England, Scotland and Wales. Caulton (2010) lists 109 of them existing around 1950, most operated as concessions in large department stores, although there were a number of stand-alone studios in busy central locations.


Sabrina at a Polyfoto studio in a department store, 1956
Image © and courtesy of British Pathé
British Pathé has a wonderfully evocative film clip of Sabrina in her sweater (for those among you familiar with the Goon show) having her portrait taken at a Polyfoto booth in Bourne and Hollingsworth's department store (click on image above to view the clip). They advertised themselves as "the only system of photography giving natural and truly characteristic portraits, since the sitter can move and converse freely whilst the 48 photographs are being taken."

The sitter was asked to look this way and that. Sometimes the session was stopped, to remove a hat or coat. The photographer would chat to the sitter to put them at ease and often induced a genuine smile. Children were often given a ball or balloon to play with.

(Geoff Caulton, 2010)

A former employee of Polyfoto describes here how the camera was operated and the glass plates then dispatched to the Head Office and factory at Stanmore in North London (later located at Boreham Wood, Hertfordshire) (Anon, 2006).


Polyfoto proof sheet envelope
Image © and collection of Brett Payne, courtesy of Anthony Norton
After developing the glass plate negative, 48-photo proof sheets were printed using fixed-focus enlargers and sent back to the studios. The envelope shown above, marked with the address of Derby's Polyfoto studio at number 3 The Spot, is presumed to be one in which the proof sheet was delivered to the studio, ready for collection by the customer.


Yvonne Chevalier, De Gruchy's Department Store, St Helier, Jersey, c.1948
Proof sheet (silver gelatin print, 225 x 300mm) and numbered plastic sleeve by Polyfoto Ltd.
Image © and courtesy of Alison Richards
This proof sheet shows 48 different photographs arranged in a 6x8 grid, together with a numbered plastic sleeve or overlay, from which the customer could choose to have one or more shots enlarged at an additional cost.


Variation in degree of sepia-toning of Polyfoto print enlargements
Images © and courtesy of Barbara Ellison
The enlargements could be supplied in a number of different formats, ranging from 4" x 5" to 10" x 12", and with a variety of finishes, including sepia toning and colouring.


Enid Joan Goacher, Sussex, c.1948
Proof sheet (silver gelatin print, 225 x 300mm) by Polyfoto Ltd.
Image © and courtesy of George Plemper
Of course the individual prints on the proof sheet could themselves be used and, as Geoff Caulton notes (2010), many carefully selected shots were cut out and "carried in purses, wallets and paybooks in every theatre of war."


Paul Godfrey, Arnold's Ltd., Great Yarmouth, 1949
Mounted proof print, taken by Polyfoto Ltd in a department store booth
Image © and courtesy of Paul Godfrey
Many proof prints were individually mounted behind simple pre-printed passe-partout card frames, such as this cute example from fellow photohistory enthusiast Paul Godfrey.



Geoff Caulton also has a number of fine specimens displayed on his PhotoDetective web site (click the Gallery button), most of which appear to have been taken during the war years, and I suspect this is when the Polyfoto attained its greatest popularity.


Mary Lavender Wallis in WAAF uniform, before June 1942
Booklet of proofs by Polyfoto Ltd.
Image © and courtesy of Nigel Aspdin
One could also chose to have the proof sheet cut up into blocks of six and mounted in a plastic-covered album, such as this booklet ordered by Nigel Aspdin's mother, and probably taken at a Polyfoto branch in London shortly before she received a commission in the WAAF in June 1942. She visited the studio for another session in her new officer's uniform sometime after that date, for which Nigel also has an almost complete proof sheet.



It appears that Polyfoto was not restricted to the United Kingdom. The above unidentified and undated print is from Denmark, and I have also seen a characteristically diminutive print originating from Leipzig, Germany. I'd be interested in hearing from readers who have seen examples from even further afield, as I am unsure whether the cameras ever reached North America or the Antipodes.


Former Polyfoto studio in Hainstrasse, Leipzig, Germany
Digital image taken with Sigma DP2s camera, 19 February 2012
Image © and courtesy of -fs-
It is not clear how long the Polyfoto network lasted although certainly by the late 1960s, when the head office moved to Watford, its popularity was on the wane. Several sources claim that the reason for its demise was the coin-operated photobooth although I have my doubts, since the operator-free booths were already well established prior to the Second World War, when the Polyfoto network was expanding rapidly.


Duc de Coimbra, c.1860
Albumen print (201 x 237mm), uncut carte de visite sheet, by Disderi
Image © and courtesy of George Eastman House (GEH NEG:13908)
The idea of exposing multiple frames on a single photographic plate was not a new one. In fact, it had been around for nearly seven decades prior to the Polyfoto camera's debut in 1933, and indeed formed the basis of popular commercial photographic portraiture in the 1860s and 1870s, as introduced by Disderi and others with the carte de visite format in the mid- to late 1850s. Using a multi-lens camera several (usually eight) exposures were made on a single collodion wet-plate which was contact-printed on albumen paper. The images were then cut up and mounted on card separately as cartes de visite.


Simon Wing Ajax Multiplying Wet Plate Camera, c.1899-1900
Image © and courtesy of David Tristram Ludwig's Antique Cameras Photo Gallery
This technique of taking several frames on a single plate also found very popular use in the production of gem tintypes, which I will cover in a forthcoming Photo-Sleuth article. The multiplying wet-plate camera designed by Simon Wing and shown above, had a mechanism surprisingly similar to that of the Polyfoto camera of 1933. So, as some say, there is nothing new under the sun.

Before you head over to see what the rest of the Sepia Saturday folk have in store for you this week, have a look at this poignant two-and-a-half-minute Polyfoto compilation by Daniel Meadows about his parents.

References

Polyphoto Portrait Photography Studios web site. [retrieved 19 May 2013]

Anon (2006) Reviving the Polyfoto, on Camster Factor, 2 March 2006. [retrieved 19 May 2013]

Anon (nd) Polyfoto Vintage Style Photobooths, on Ian Johnson Wedding Photographer. [retrieved 19 May 2013]

Caulton, Geoff (2010) The Polyfoto and Polyfoto Studios, on PhotoDetective. [retrieved 19 May 2013]

Coe, Brian (1978) Cameras: From Daguerreotypes to Instant Pictures, United States: Crown Publishers.

Sepia Saturday 176: Erasmus Bostock, Photographer of Schools &c.

A wealth of topics are suggested by this week's Sepia Saturday image prompt depicting a scene very familiar to me from my school and university days, although I must admit that my efforts in the chemistry laboratory were never very successful. The plethora of bunsen burners, tripods, glass beakers and a shelf of bottles containing reagents are almost enough to overwhelm the class of teenage boys and their teacher, but it is school children to which I'll direct my attention in this post.

Vintage school photos have long intrigued me, and I must confess to a degree of sympathy for the nineteenth century photographer who was called to his neighbourhood school for the annual class portrait sessions. Anyone who has tried to photograph a group of school children will appreciate how tricky it is to capture the attention of all individuals simultaneously, and to prevent any of the more unruly in the class from pulling funny faces just as the shutter is released.


Unidentified class portrait by Erasmus Bostock of Derby, c.1889-1892
Large format print (157 x 100mm) mounted on card (166 x 108mm)
Image © and collection of Brett Payne
This class of 55 children - I make it 22 girls and 33 boys, but am unsure of the gender of a few of them - are being very capably supervised by a severe looking older woman at far right, who has one little miscreant firmly in her grasp, and her eagle eye on a troublesome group of boys in the centre. The younger teacher on the left, perhaps an assistant, also has her hand on a young girl's shoulder. The photographer's "hold still" command or some other attention grabbing signal (he's very unlikely to have asked them to "smile for the camera" as smiling wasn't part of the portrait convention for the Victorians) has produced a very successful response. Only two of the children were moving when he eventually exposed the glass plate.

And that is before the complicated processes involved in collodion or wet-plate photography are taken into account [1]. There is evidence suggesting that Erasmus Bostock started his career as a scholastic photographer in the mid-1870s, apprenticed at the Derby studio of William Pearson [2], when wet-plate photography was still very much the norm. Although the gelatin dry-plate procedure was first described by Maddox in print in 1871, it wasn't until March 1878 that an improved technique was published by Charles Bennett in the British Journal of Photography. The new dry plates could be prepared in advance of the sitting, and then processed later, but an additional benefit was that the new gelatin emulsion were considerably "faster," reducing exposure times to as little as a tenth of a second. [3]


Unidentified class portrait by Erasmus Bostock of Derby, c.1889-1892
Large format print (162 x 104mm) mounted on card (166 x 107mm)
Image © and collection of Brett Payne
The second portrait, the pair having been purchased together on eBay, was probably taken on the same day, and appears to be a class of 49 slightly younger boys (24) and girls (25). This time there is only one smartly dressed and coiffured school mistress, who is looking after a rather fidgety boy, but the remainder of the class seem pretty well behaved, if a little glum (apart from a talkative girl who moved her head sharply just as the exposure took place). My guess is that somewhere in the two group portraits are two siblings, although there is no indication which school this was and all provenance has sadly been lost.


Thornton-Pickard Triple Imperial Extension camera, c.1903-1910s
Image © and courtesy of the Tauranga Heritage Collection
Photographic manufacturers began to produce dry-plates over the next few months from March 1978, and within a few years, the wet-plate process had by and large been abandoned. By the time Bostock took these two portraits around 1890, he would almost certainly have used a dry-plate camera. The dimensions of these prints (roughly 6¼" x 4") suggests that he may have taken two exposures side-by-side on a full-plate (6½" x 8½") device, perhaps something similar to the slightly later Thornton-Pickard Triple Imperial Extension folding bellows camera, shown below, that I recently photographed in the Tauranga Heritage Collection. Many models of folding stand cameras were produced in Great Britain from the 1870s to the 1890s [4], and the excellent Early Photography web site has a wide selection of such field cameras on display [5].


Reverse of card mount by Erasmus Bostock of Derby, c.1889-1892
Image © and collection of Brett Payne
Derby had several photographers who were prepared to visit schools - I have seen examples from George Holden, Thomas Lewis, R.K. Peacock, Gervase Gibson & Sons and George Bower [6-9] - but Erasmus Foster Bostock appears to have been the only practitioner to have specialised in scholastic portraits. As evidenced by a class photo taken c.1881-1882 [7], Bostock used a hand stamp rather than cardstock pre-printed with his name for at least a decade. Although this was slightly unusual for a photographer who remained in business in one location for more than a couple of years, it would have been slightly cheaper and would have given him the added flexibility of being able to trim card mounts to suit particular photographs.


Unidentified class portrait by E.F. Bostock of Nottingham, c.1900-1902
Large format print (209 x 155mm) mounted on decorated card (261 x 209mm)
Image © and collection of Brett Payne
Between 1891 and 1894 Bostock moved with his family to the nearby town of Nottingham, where he again set up a practice as a schools photographer, operating out of his home at 76 Burford Road (1894-1901) and 32 Maples Street (1901-c.1902) [10-14]. It is during the latter period that I estimate he took this very competent, albeit now somewhat damaged, class photograph of 36 children (28 boys and 8 girls). While the card stock now has a printed design surround the photograph, he was still printing his name and location on the mount.

The imbalance between numbers of boys and girls, the wide range in apparent ages (from 7 or 8 to early teens), and the shape of the door in the background all suggest to me that it was perhaps a Sunday School class. A somewhat hirsute male teacher this time casts a stern eye over his well-behaved charges. I note that several of the pupils have medals pinned to their lapels or, in the case of the girls, bodices - one surprised looking boy has three of them! I hope this was the "Gregory" whose name is pencilled on the back. Apart from this, there are no clues as to location or identity of the subjects.


Samuel Collison (b. 1886), aged 17 or 18, taken c.1903-1904
Cabinet card portrait by E.F. Bostock of 24 Moorgate Street, Nottingham
Image © and courtesy of Simon Collison, Some rights reserved
Between 1902 and 1903, judging by entries in trade directories of the period, Bostock started operating a portrait studio with premises at 24 Moorgate Street, Radford (now a suburb of Nottingham) [15,16]. This appears to be the same premises occupied by well known Radford photographer Edward Carnell from 1879 until 1901 [14], and I suspect that Bostock took over the business from Carnell on the latter's retirement. That he already had some experience of studio portraiture is clear from the early 1880s portrait in my profile of Bostock. Perhaps he found that catering to schools alone was not bringing in sufficient business, or it may simply have been that he was weary of the seasonal and peripatetic nature of that work, but it seems that from 1903 onwards he concentrated on studio portraiture.

In 1915, he moved again to a studio at 44 Clarendon Street and in 1919, at the age of 61, Erasmus Bostock died after three and a half decades in the photographic business. [18,19] The studio was probably taken over by his son Erasmus James Bostock (1885-1970), who was working as a photographic assistant in 1911 and still described himself as a photographer when he emigrated with his wife and young son to Australia in October 1928. [20-23]

References

[1] Hirsch, Robert (2009) Pictures on Glass: The Wet-Plate Process, Chapter 4 in Seizing The Light (2nd edition), available online on Luminous Lint.

[2] Payne, Brett (2009) All lined up in the school playground in their Sunday best, Photo-Sleuth, 17 October 2009.

[3] Coe, Brian (1976) The Birth of Photography: The Story of the Formative Years, 1800-1900, Great Britain: Ash & Grant, p 38-39.

[4] Coe, Brian (1978) Cameras: From Daguerreotypes to Instant Pictures, United States: Crown Publishers, p 29-40.

[5] Field Cameras, on the Early Photography web site.

[6] Payne, Brett (2011) Sepia Saturday 97: Geo W Holden, Brother of the more famous Jack, on Photo-Sleuth, 20 October 2011.

[7] Payne, Brett (2008) More photos from St James' Board School, on Photo-Sleuth, 14 September 2008.

[8] Payne, Brett (2008) St. Chad's Church Schools, Derby, 1895, on Photo-Sleuth, 10 May 2008.

[9] Payne, Brett (2007) A Derbyshire photographer working afield, on Photo-Sleuth, 15 August 2007.

[10] 1891 Census for 102 Drewry Lane, Derby St Werburgh, Derbyshire Ref. RG12/2731/102/15/95, courtesy of Ancestry.co.uk.

[11] Anon (1891) Kelly's Directory of Derbyshire, Leicestershire & Rutland, and Nottinghamshire, Seventh Edition, 1891, London: Kelly & Co., courtesy of the University of Leicester's Historical Directories.

[12] Wright, C.N. (1895) Directory of Nottingham and Twelve Miles Round, Seventeenth Edition, 1894-1895, courtesy of the University of Leicester's Historical Directories.

[13] Wright, C.N. (1899) Directory of the City of Nottingham, Nineteenth Edition, 1898-1899, courtesy of the University of Leicester's Historical Directories.

[14] Heathcote, Bernard V. & Heathcote, Pauline F. (1982) Leicester Photographic Studios in Victorian & Edwardian Times, publ. Historical Group of the Royal Photographic Society.

[15] Anon (1903) Wright's Directory of the City of Nottingham including the Immediate Neighbourhoods, Twenty-First Edition, 1902-1903, London: Kelly's Directories Ltd., courtesy of Ancestry.co.uk.

[16] Anon (1904) Kelly's Directory of Nottinghamshire, 1904, London: Kelly's Directories Ltd., courtesy of the University of Leicester's Historical Directories.

[17] Portrait of Simon Collison, Image © and courtesy of Simon Collison's Flickr photostream.

[18] Anon (1916) Wright's Directory of Nottingham and Neighbourhood, Twenty-Sixth Edition, 1915-1916, London: Kelly's Directories Ltd., courtesy of the University of Leicester's Historical Directories.

[19] UK General Register Office Death Index entry for Erasmus F Bostock, aged 61, Dec Qtr 1919, Nottingham Registration District, Vol 7b Pg 356, courtesy of FreeBMD.

[20] 1911 Census for 32 Maples St, Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, courtesy of Ancestry.co.uk.

[21] Anon (1920) Wright's Directory of Nottingham and Neighbourhood, Twenty-Seventh Edition, 1920, London: Kelly's Directories Ltd., courtesy of Ancestry.co.uk.

[22] Passenger Manifest for ship Hobson's Bay, London (England) to Sydney (Australia), 30 October 1928, in UK, Outward Passenger Lists, 1890-1960 database, courtesy of Ancestry.co.uk.

[23] NSW Registry of Births, Deaths & Marriages Index entry for James Bostock, 1970, Hornby, Reg No 14672/1970, courtesy of the NSW Government web site.

Sepia Saturday 175: Andy Warhol looks a scream, Hang him on my wall

Several regular visitors from Sepia Saturday have in the past commented on the length of some of my articles and asked how long it takes me to compile them. The short answer is How long's a piece of string? because some (e.g SS173) are off the cuff, while others are years in the making, gestating slowly either in my mind or as an accumulating collection of notes on the computer's hard disk. This week's contribution is one of the latter, a culmination of some four years of research, the publication of which has been triggered by a fortuitous find in the Tauranga Heritage Collection's store of cameras and photographic paraphernalia, and Alan's image prompt featuring coin-operated machines.


Photobooth self portraits by Andy Warhol, c. 1963
Gelatin silver prints, each 36 x 196 mm
Image courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art
I've long had a fascination with the idea of photobooths, although by the time Andy Warhol turned them into tools of pop art and culture in the 1960s, they were well past their heyday. I don't remember ever seeing one, let alone having my portrait captured in one, during my youth in the 1960s and 1970s, but admittedly I was living in a former colonial backwater.

What made this style of portrait unique, at least until the advent of digital cameras and the ubiquitous camera phone, and no doubt the main attraction for the average joe (Hofman, 2011) as well as Warhol and like-minded celebrities, was that its composition was placed firmly in the hands of the subject.

For Warhol, the photo booth represented a quintessentially modern intersection of mass entertainment and private self-contemplation ... In these little curtained theaters, the sitter could adopt a succession of different roles ... Here, Warhol has adopted the surly, ultracool persona of movie stars such as Marlon Brando and James Dean, icons of the youth culture that he idolized.

(Anon, 2000)

Photobooth portraits of Surrealist figures
Photomontage by André Breton, 1928
He was not the first to use the photobooth in such a manner, the French surrealist André Breton having reputedly persuaded various contemporaries, including Salvador Dali, Max Ernest and Rene Magritte, into entering recently installed Photomaton booths on the Champs-Élysées in Paris, the products of which he then compiled into the slightly disturbing photomontage above (Bloch, 2012).


Portrait of two unidentified men, one in soldier's uniform, c.1915-1916
Taken at Sidney Boultwood's Stickybacks studio, 66 St Peter's St, Derby
Image © and collection of Brett Payne
While I don't intend to recount the origins and early history of the photobooth here, I will recommend Mark Bloch's Behind the Curtain and David Simkin's Automatic Portrait Photographs, which do exactly that, in an authoritative, concise manner. For a more detailed account, try Näkki Goranin's recently published and well received book, American Photobooth. Although there were various attempts at mechanisation and automation of the photographic portraiture process from the late 1880s onwards, including Spiridione Grossi and Abraham Dudkin's Stickybacks in the United Kingdom (Simkin, 2013a & b), none appear to have met with significant commercial success until the mid-1920s.


Anatol Josepho with his Photomaton booth
Image © Modern Mechanics and courtesy of modernmechanix.com
Then in 1925 Anatol Josepho, a distant relative of Abraham Dudkin, patented the first reliable coin-operated automatic photobooth, the Photomaton. Advertised as producing a strip of eight cheap, good quality photographs in 8 minutes, the first Photomaton booths in New York were spectacularly successful, reputedly attracting "280,000 customers in the first 6 months." Two years later Josepho sold the Photomaton machines and patent rights to Henry Morgenthau for a staggering million dollars and future royalties (Kneen, 1928 & Bloch, 2012).


William Rabkin's 1937 Photomatic Patent Application No. 2,192,755
Images courtesy of Google Patents
Throughout the 1930s there were numerous copy-cat efforts and refinements, but the most significant development took place in 1934, after William Rabkin bought out both Photomaton and the International Mutoscope Reel Company. He improved the design of the photographic apparatus, transformed the exteriors with art deco styling and changed the name to the Photomatic. A new wave of photobooth popularity ensued, perhaps due to the chic styling available at a low cost during the peak of the Great Depression.


Original Photomatic photo booth, Machine No. DP 3
Image © and courtesy of The Powerhouse Museum
Photomatic booths were manufactured in enormous numbers, in almost any colour you could think of, and shipped to all corners of the world. The remarkably intact apparatus in the image above from Sydney's Powerhouse Museum, apparently one of the few examples that have survived, was probably used in Queensland around 1935 to 1938.


Instruction plate from a Photomatic photo booth, c.1935-1940
Image © and courtesy of Tauranga Heritage Collection
This rather grimy Photomatic booth instruction plate from the Tauranga Heritage Collection (above, Machine No. DP 220) is all that's left of a seemingly identical apparatus, suggesting that the machines may also have been exported to and used within New Zealand. Wellington's Evening Post carried an advertisement in January 1940 (below) calling for the services of a "smart young girl" to operate a Photomatic machine at the New Zealand Centennial Exhibition.


Advertisement, Evening Post (Wellington, New Zealand), 23 January 1940

Portrait of unidentified woman, 14 October 1938
Silver gelatin print in crimped metal frame with printed card backing
Taken by Photomatic booth at Detroit Bus Station
The feature differentiating Photomatic portraits from those produced by competitors was that the customer received a print "already framed." Constructed of a thin strip of sheet metal, the frame was crimped around the silver gelatin print and a printed card backing. Early Photomatic frames were all silver in colour and the backing designs simple, allowing for a date and place taken to be written by the customer. The card itself followed the art deco theme, and was usually a shiny silver colour.


Postcard of Greyhound Bus Terminal, Detroit, Michigan
Image © and courtesy of Donald Coffin's Greyhound Bus Memories
The Photomatic booth where the 1938 portrait above of a woman in her smart hat and furs was taken would have matched the sleek lines of the Greyhound Detroit Bus Terminal exterior perfectly.


Portrait of unidentified woman, undated
Silver gelatin print in crimped metal frame with printed card backing
Taken by Photomatic booth on the NYNHH Railroad
Image © Marc Frattasio and courtesy of the New Haven RR H&T Assn
Photobooth concessions were operating in public places country-wide, and the backing card stock soon carried the names of the locations or concessions. The portrait of the woman above was probably taken by Photomatic booth located on a station platform or in a waiting room similar to that shown at Boston's South Station, below.


Photomatic booth in waiting room, South Station, Boston
Image © Marc Frattasio and courtesy of The New Haven Railroad Historical and Technical Association, Inc.

Portrait of unidentified man, 6 November 1938
Silver gelatin print in crimped metal frame with printed card backing
Taken by Photomatic booth at Plankinton Arcade, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
This taciturn young man and his somewhat oversized cap paused long enough in the Photomatic booth in the busy Plankinton Arcade to record his passing through in the autumn of 1938. Wherever there were throngs of people, the International Mutoscope Reel Co. installed their Photomatic booths.


Portrait of unidentified soldier, 13 January 1942
Silver gelatin print in crimped metal frame with printed card backing
Taken by Photomatic booth in Washington, D.C.
Image © Brian and courtesy of Photobooth.net
A little over three years later, and the booths were filled with very different looking subjects. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour on 7 December 1941, the United States was at war and tens of thousands of uniformed servicemen all wanted a photo before they shipped out. Five weeks after the Declaration of War, this soldier was probably both excited and nervous when he posed with a cupid-style caricature cut-out in Washington D.C. in January 1942.


Portrait of unidentified US Marine, 25 February 1944
Silver gelatin print with magenta card frame & printed card backing
Taken by Photomatic booth in Newark, New Jersey
Image © and collection of Brett Payne
In 1944 and 1945, possibly due to shortages of metal, Photomatic portraits were produced with thick coloured satin-finish card "Photoframes." This example from early 1944 shows a marine home on furlough in Newark, New Jersey.


Portrait of unidentified woman, September 1945
Silver gelatin print with blue card frame & printed card backing
Taken by Photomatic booth in New York City
These wartime issues had no special place on the back for the place and date to be filled, but some helpful subjects wrote them anyway. This happy bespectacled woman in a striped blouse was presumably caught up in the euphoria that swept New York after the Japanese surrender on 14 August:

In the summer of 1945, New York was a city riding a wave of triumph ... It was a time of unbridled self-confidence. The city had contributed 850,000 servicemen to the war effort. The war had transformed New York into the capital of the world.

(Roberts, 1995)

Portrait of unidentified woman, 8 June 1947
Silver gelatin print with red metal frame & printed card backing
Taken by Photomatic booth in New York
After the war ended, Photomatic reintroduced metal frames, and for a couple of years they were enamelled in a variety of colours, including white, red, pale blue, lime green and orange. However, the frame itself had a slightly different profile, as shown in a modified patent application filed by Rabkin in 1948 (below), and included a fold-out stand.


William Rabkin's 1948 Photomatic Patent Application No. 2,647,834
Image courtesy of Google Patents

Portrait of unidentified US soldier, undated
Silver gelatin print with silver metal frame & printed card backing
Taken by Photomatic booth in unidentified location
Image © and collection of Brett Payne
Eventually the enamelling was dispensed with, and the standard issue frames returned to either plain silver or, more rarely, gold. I suspect this young man's uniform is not military (Correction: this is a US Army cap badge, thanks Mike), but he was proud of it and it's sad that he didn't take the time to record a message on the back. It is probably from the late 1950s.


Portrait of two unidentified women, 13 July 1953
Silver gelatin print with silver metal frame & printed card backing
Taken by Photomatic booth in unknown location
Image © and collection of Brett Payne
This image of two young women was taken in July 1953 and bears the caption, "Dig this". Comparing their clothing and hairstyles with an old Life magazine from that date, it seems likely that they'd been out shopping or to the hair stylist. They do seem rather pleased with themselves.


Portrait of Beth's mother, 17 July 1945
Silver gelatin print with silver metal frame & printed card backing
Taken by Photomatic booth at Grand Central Station, New York City
Image © and courtesy of musicmuse_ca & Flickr
It is a sad reality that many of the subjects of such found photos and the places where they were taken will never be identified, let alone the context or situation be deduced. However, browsing the internet for examples of Photomatics, one soon appreciates that many of them are still in situ, so to speak, and form an important part of family history. This image on musicmuse_ca's Flickr photostream shows her mother on her wedding day.

This is the shot my mother took on the day she got married to her first husband Fred. It was taken on a photomatic photo machine in Grand Central train station in NYC.
He got a job working for the Canadian Press in NYC. He had been dating my mother since 1939, and they had virtually lived together for several years in Toronto. He asked her to marry him and they took the train from Toronto to NYC.
The marriage to Fred did not last more than 5 years, but my mother's love affair with NYC lasted from 1945 until her death in Manhattan in January of 2003.

These words and further background to the story (Truth, Lies and Betrayal 9/1939) make it a material symbol, despite its inauspicious beginnings in the hustle and bustle of New York's Grand Central Station.


Portrait of unidentified woman, undated
Silver gelatin print with red plastic frame & printed card backing
Taken by Photomatic booth in unknown location
By the late 1950s, the design of the frame had changed again, the crimped metal being replaced by much more the much more versatile, rust-proof and cheaper ubiquitous plastic. The characteristic art deco styling of the Photomatic brand was gone forever.


Unidentified couple, Long Beach Pier, Los Angeles, California, undated
Snapshot by unidentified photographer
The Photomatic was also facing stiff competition from rivals. Bloch (2012) suggests that it was outclassed by the superior technological, marketing and distribution techniques of companies such as Auto-Photo Co. One should not ignore the fact that more and more people owned their own cameras. This snapshot, probably from the mid- to late 1950s, shows a sailor and his sweetheart, the latter with a camera in a leather case around her shoulder. They are posing in front of a Penny Arcade at Long Beach Pier, an unoccupied photobooth clearly visible in the background.


Photomatic photobooth, candy and cigarette machines, Kansas, 1959
Image © and courtesy of These Americans Archive
I get the impression that Photomatic booths, despite attempts at rebranding and restyling, were slowly being relegated to the amusement arcades and drugstores where their predecessors had originated a quarter of a century earlier. This 1959 booth, perched between the candy and cigarette machines, boasts a brand new look and a comely invitation to "Take your photo ... now!" but I detect a whisper of hesitation. Perhaps she, like Jeannette below, is waiting for the right man to come along.


"Jeanette" and Elvis Presley, undated
Photobooth portrait at unidentified location
References

Photobooth.net, by Brian and Tim

International Mutoscope Reel Company, from Wikipedia.

The History & Progression of the Photo Booth, from Green Cheeze's Blog.

Andy Warhol, lyrics by David Bowie, 1971

Photographic booths, 1930-1940, from The Powerhouse Museum.

Anon (1934) Business & Finance: Pin Game, 24 December 1934, TIME Magazine.

Anon (1935) Science: Photomatic, Monday, 4 February 1935, TIME Magazine.

Anon (2000) "Andy Warhol: Photo Booth Self-Portrait (1996.63a,b)," in Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000. (October 2006)

Anon (2004) The "PhotoMatic" Photo Machines, New Haven Railroad Historical and Technical Association, Inc.

Anon (2013) Say 'cheese in the photobooth, from Diario de Una Pin Up Frustrada, 24 January 2013.

Bloch, Mark (2012) Behind the Curtain: A History of the Photobooth.

Goranin, Näkki (2008) The history of the photobooth, 7 March 2008, The Telegraph, Extract from American Photobooth by Näkki Goranin, publ. by W.W. Norton & Company.

Griffiths, Katherine (2011-2013) - Photobooth Journal: A life in a photobooth.

Hofman, Juli (2011) Photomatic Pics of my Grandpa: D*** It Feels Good To Be a Gangsta, posted 5 Dec 2011 on The Williamson Vampires blog.

Kneen, Orville H. (1928) Penniless Inventor Gets Million for Photo Machine, in Modern Mechanics and Inventions, November 1928.

Linderman, Jim (2011) Mat Mugs! The Wonderful Photomatic Photograph Machine and Mutoscope. William Rabkin Fast Talking Genius of the Photomatic Machine and the Claw, posted in April 2011 on the Dull Tool Dim Bulb blog.

Roberts, Sam (1994) NEW YORK 1945; The War Was Ending. Times Square Exploded. Change Was Coming. in The New York Times, 30 July 1995.

Simkin, David (2013a) Automatic Portrait Photographs: The Sticky Backs Studio, Spiridione Grossi, Abraham Dudkin, Anatol Josepho and the Photomaton, on Sussex PhotoHistory.

Simkin, David (2013b) Sidney Boultwood and his Stickybacks Studios, on Sussex PhotoHistory.