Sepia Saturday 281: Home Duties

I recently purchased a box containing nineteen exposed 4" x 5" glass plate negatives. They depict various women and children, some of whom appear to be members of the same family. Sadly there are no notes or provenance to provide clues as to their origin but, as I will show, the batch appears to have survived as an intact collection. In other words, they probably belong together. They have little in common with this week's Sepia Saturday theme, except that two of the images show children engaged in what might with some latitude be called "home duties."


As with my recent studies of small photographic collections, A Grand Tour of Europe and Summer Holidays in Derbyshire, this group appears to have been taken in the early years of the twentieth century. Unlike the other two groups, these 19 photographs appear to have been taken over and extended period of time, covering several years in the lives of a family living somewhere in New Zealand. None of the photographs are annotated, nor is the box that they arrived in, so all provenance has unfortunately been lost.

One of the purposes for my showing these images is to demonstrate the process that I go through when researching such collections, in an an attempt to decide whether they are linked to each other in any way and, if so, then to try and establish a theoretical framework around the subjects. In many cases this may never lead to an positive identification but occasionally I have breakthroughs.


Image #09 - Three teenage children ("Agnes," "Charlie" and "Bertha")
5" x 4" (127 x 102mm) glass plate negative, unknown photographer
Image © Copyright & collection of Brett Payne
I'll start with this nicely focussed snapshot of three teenage children, two girls and a boy, seated on a grassy bank in the shade of tree. Just for convenience I'l call them "Agnes" (left), "Bertha" (right) and "Charlie." The girls have taken their hats off, while the boy, who looks as though he never bothered with one, is eating what looks to me like a dark-skinned plum. The clear images of these three individuals allows us to follow them through several years.


Image #14 - Three young children ("Agnes," "Bertha" and "Charlie")
4" x 5" (102 x 127mm) glass plate negative, unknown photographer
Image © Copyright & collection of Brett Payne
This image is partly out of focus, possibly blurred from movement and slightly over-exposed, but I think that the same three children are pictured hanging up the washing, although this must have a few years earlier. "Agnes" is handing a peg to "Bertha" and barefooted "Charlie" appears to have carelessly dropped the tin of pegs on the ground.


Image #05 - Three young children ("Bertha," "Agnes" and "Charlie")
5" x 4" (127 x 102mm) glass plate negative, unknown photographer
Image © Copyright & collection of Brett Payne
The trio are probably at the beach on this occasion, younger still, with one of the girls wearing a rather impractical cap which must have been difficult to control when the wind got up. "Charlie," seated with legs apart at right, is "unbreeched."


Image #16 - Young boy ("Charlie"), possibly with his mother ("Doris")
4" x 5" (102 x 127mm) glass plate negative, unknown photographer
Image © Copyright & collection of Brett Payne
Young "Charlie," here dressed in a Fauntleroy suit popular in the 1890s and early 1900s, appears with a young woman aged in her late twenties or early thirties, seated on a wicker chair, who I think might be his mother and who we will call "Doris."


Image #08 - Young child with doll on wicker chair (possibly "Charlie")
4" x 5" (102 x 127mm) glass plate negative, unknown photographer
Image © Copyright & collection of Brett Payne
An even younger child sits confidently in a different wicker chair placed on the lawn, holding a doll. Despite the presence of the doll, the child's facial features suggest to me that this, too, is our "Charlie."


Image #10 - Young boy in school uniform ("Charlie")
4" x 5" (102 x 127mm) glass plate negative, unknown photographer
Image © Copyright & collection of Brett Payne
Here is "Charlie" dressed in somewhat smarter attire, perhaps ready for his first day at school. The background to this photograph includes the wall of a house, possibly on a verandah or adjacent to an extrance, an upholstered straight-backed chair and a floral carpet.


Image #04 - Older woman ("Eliza") & teenage girl ("Frances") on verandah
4" x 5" (102 x 127mm) glass plate negative, unknown photographer
Image © Copyright & collection of Brett Payne
An almost identical background, only the chair having been changed, appears in two further photographs depicting three more women. In the first portrait an older woman (I'll call her "Eliza"), perhaps in her sixties, is sitting on the chair, while a different teenage girl (say "Frances") is seated on the carpet at her feet.


Image #17 - Middle-aged woman seated on verandah ("Doris")
4" x 5" (102 x 127mm) glass plate negative, unknown photographer
Image © Copyright & collection of Brett Payne
The third verandah portrait shows the middle-aged woman - I'm guessing she is in her late thirties to early forties - we've previous identified as the boy's mother ("Doris") sitting in the same chair. Unlike the others photographed on what may be the same occasion, who face directly into the camera lens, her gaze is off to the right of the photographer.


Image #02 - Middle-aged woman seated outdoors ("Doris")
4" x 5" (102 x 127mm) glass plate negative, unknown photographer
Image © Copyright & collection of Brett Payne
Within the same general time frame, but probably on a different occasion, "Doris" sat for another portrait outside her home. The same mouldings that appear in other images of their home are featured prominently in this shot, taken when the shadows were long, but still with enough light to make a decent picture. She has a low pompadour hairstyle and is wearing a leather-cased ladies' fob watch, both of which were popular in the decade immediately preceding the Great War, i.e. between c. 1905 and 1915. The jigsaw embroidery on the front of her blouse and hobble skirt with large buttons are typical of the same period.


Image #01 - Two young women reading ("Agnes" and "Bertha")
5" x 4" (127 x 102mm) glass plate negative, unknown photographer
Image © Copyright & collection of Brett Payne
Relatively few shots in this series show the surroundings of the house, but one that does is this view of the two girls ("Agnes" and "Bertha") seated in the garden, reading. "Bertha" has bagged the comfortable canvas folding deck chair, while "Agnes" has to make do with a dining room chair set partially in the shade. The presence of tree ferns indicates a strong likelihood that these photos originate here in New Zealand, where they were purchased. They both wear sensible wide-brimmed hats, Bertha's being of the distinctive cartwheel type. The house itself has a wide verandah along at least two sides, and a wooden railing in a stylish geometric pattern.


Image #12 - Teenage girl and apple tree ("Agnes")
4" x 5" (102 x 127mm) glass plate negative, unknown photographer
Image © Copyright & collection of Brett Payne
There are two further portraits of "Agnes" on her own. In the first of these she is standing next to what I believe to be an apple tree, dressed in the same clothing as Image #09, but with her hat on. More prominent in this photo is the narrow velvet choker around her neck, a fashion that arose with the appearance of lower necklines around 1905 to 1910.


Image #19 - Teenage girl, possibly in school uniform ("Agnes")
4" x 5" (102 x 127mm) glass plate negative, unknown photographer
Image © Copyright & collection of Brett Payne
In the next photo "Agnes" is seated in a chair, possibly on the verandah of the house, but in a different location from portraits #04, #08 & #10 displayed above. She is wearing what I think might be a school uniform, with a smart jacket or blazer, dark leather gloves, a tie with a shield and emblem embroidered on it, a straw boater with a broad striped hat band, and her hair tied up with a large bow at the back of her neck.


Image #11 - Three women in the garden ("Agnes", "Eliza" and "Gertrude")
5" x 4" (127 x 102mm) glass plate negative, unknown photographer
Image © Copyright & collection of Brett Payne
In a group portrait "Agnes" is seated with two older women, both on chairs placed on the path in front of the house, one of whom is "Eliza" from Image #04. She has a high-necked collar and is holding a pair of spectacles in her lap. The third woman, wearing a white blouse and tie, I will call "Gertrude."


Image #03 - Two women on the garden pth ("Gertrude" and "Eliza")
5" x 4" (127 x 102mm) glass plate negative, unknown photographer
Image © Copyright & collection of Brett Payne
A view of the garden path immediately to the right of the previous image shows "Eliza" and "Gertrude" dressed warmly in furs and large feathered hats walking towards the house.


Image #18 - Teenage girl on windowsill ("Frances")
4" x 5" (102 x 127mm) glass plate negative, unknown photographer
Image © Copyright & collection of Brett Payne
The third girl ("Frances") is depicted in another portrait, also taken on the verandah, although she is seated precariously on the wide windowsill. Her clothing and hair style are identical with that worn in Image #04, and the two photographs are likely to have been taken on the same occasion.



The Picasa album slideshow above shows the full set of images in the approximate order that I believe they were taken, probably over a period about a decade some time between the years of c.1900 and 1915.

My analysis of the family is as follows:
- Agnes, Bertha and Charlie are siblings, probably born in the late 1890s to early 1900s
- Doris is the children's mother, probably born in the mid- to late 1870s
- Eliza is the children's grandmother, probably born in the 1850s
- Frances is possibly a cousin of Agnes, Bertha and Charlie, and a similar age to them
- Gertrude may be a friend or a relative, possibly a maiden aunt
I must reiterate that these aren't their real names; I've merely invented them for the sake of convenience.

It's possible that a positive identification of this family may be made eventually but, in the mean time, if you spot any further clues or even disagree with any of my rather tenuous deductions, please don't hesitate to get in touch or leave a comment below.

Sepia Saturday 225: Photomatic in the Antipodes, the original Selfies

I'll use the coin-operated jukebox in this week's Sepia Saturday image prompt to post a follow-up to the article on Photomatic booths and photos that I wrote a year ago.


Original Photomatic photo booth, Machine No. DP 3
Image © and courtesy of The Powerhouse Museum
Based on an advertisement in Wellington's Evening Post dated 23 January 1940 and a battered instruction plate in the Tauranga Museum collection, I have deduced previously that at least one Photomatic photobooth, such as the well preserved original shown above from Sydney's Powerhouse Museum, was exported to and operated in New Zealand.


Catherine & Errol Morton, Wellington, New Zealand, January 1940
Silver gelatin print in crimped metal frame with printed card backing
Taken by Photomatic (Wellington) Ltd.
Images © and courtesy of Margaret Parkes
I now have direct evidence of that. Margaret Parkes kindly sent me these images of two Photomatic portraits of her parents, probably taken on the eve of her father's departure for service overseas in the Second World War, possibly at the Centennial Exhibition.

I have a pair of prints of my mother and father taken in Wellington before his departure to WW2. To the best of my knowledge they were taken early in January 1940 as the troops boarded the ship on the 5th. My parents Errol and Catherine Morton were living in Taranaki so the time she was most likely to have visited Wellington was for his departure, although I see that the Centennial Exhibition was on at the time.

Advertisements from Ellesmere Guardian, 19 November 1937,
and Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, 16 November 1937
Images courtesy of Papers Past
A detailed search in the online newspaper archives of the period shows that Photomatic Limited was formed in May 1937, shares in the company quickly being listed for sale by brokers in Auckland. In November that year, the department store of Hay's Ltd in Christchurch advertised the new Photomatic as the only one of its kind in the South Island, "a wonderful machine ... takes your photo, develops, prints, and FRAMES it ... in ONE MINUTE."


Advertisement from Evening Post, 2 July 1938
Image courtesy of Papers Past
Between 11 June and 6 August 1938 Photomatic (Wellington) Limited were seeking "smart young ladies" and "smart youths" to apply in person for positions as attendants for Photomatic portrait-taking machines. The advertisement for 2 July 1938 described the booth as being located in Selfridge's Department Store, Cuba Street.


Advertisement from Evening Post, 23 January 1940
Image courtesy of Papers Past
Then there is nothing until early 1940, when the company appears to have operated a Photomatic booth at the Centennial Exhibition in Wellington. Various trade directories show the company operating from premises at 315 Cooke's Building, 58-60 Queen Street, Auckland Central in 1937-1938, from 182 Featherston Street in 1941, and at 23 Waring Taylor Street in 1948-1949, both in Wellington.

Which leaves us with a few questions that I hope we'll be able to answer some day. Why are there so few references to Photomatic booths in New Zealand? Were the booths hired out, complete with operaters, to franchisees in the various locations, or did the firm maintain control of each one? How many were there? Where did the instruction plate in the Tauranga Museum Collection come from, and where is the rest of the booth? How long did the firm remain in business? Were they really still going in 1948? Where are all the portraits taken in these booths? There must be many remaining in private collections, but I haven't been able to find any in public collections listed online.


Bud Payne, Durban, South Africa, 4 April 1968
Photomatic photobooth portrait (65 x 68mm)
Images © and collection of Brett Payne
There are few signs of Photomatic booths being exported to other parts of the world, but I found evidence that they were, somewhat bizarrely, in my own family photo collection. This photobooth portrait of my father was taken in the coastal city of Durban, South Africa in 1968, which is pretty late in context of the heyday of the American Photomatic. Although the silver card backing has no identifying marks indicating that it emanated from a Photomatic apparatus, the metal frame, card type and apparent method of manufacture are identical. It has occurred to me that it may have been produced from a refurbished Photomatic machine after the demise of the business elsewhere.


Mystery Photobooth Portraits
Image Collection of Donald Lokuta and courtesy of Rutgers Today
Lastly, I thought I'd direct readers to an article that appeared recently regarding an exhibit titled "445 Portraits of a Man" currently on display as part of "Striking Resemblance: The Changing Art of Portraiture," an exhibition showing at the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University in New Jersey until July. It's an extraordinary collection of Photomatic images, all of the same man, taken over three decades from the late 1930s until the 1960s. The man's identity and why the portraits were collected, remains a mystery.

If you haven't had enough of coin-operated machines after that, you may well find a few more among the remaining Sepia Saturday contributions this week.

References

Relevant advertisements and share price listings appeared in several New Zealand newspapers on the following dates:
Auckland Star: 15 May 1937, 17 Jul 1937, 11, 18, 22 & 23 Feb 1938, 2, 11, 15 Mar 1938
Ellesmere Guardian: 16 & 19 Nov 1937
Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser: 16 & 19 Nov 1937
Evening Post: 11 & 21 June 1938, 2 Jul 1938, 6 Aug 1938, 23 Jan 1940

Auckland Libraries Photographers Database, entry for Photomatic Wellington Ltd.

Payne, Brett (2013) Andy Warhol looks a scream, Hang him on my wall, on PhotoSleuth, 3 May 2013.

Verbanas, Patti (2014) Mystery Photobooth Portraits Baffle Historians, Rutgers Today, 27 March 2014.

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.