The romance of the vintage photo booth in a digital world

A group of young women waiting to use a Photo Booth machine in 1963. (Photo by Len Trievnor/Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images) | Getty Images

The camera flash turned my vision white, leaving a flurry of stars behind as I was caught off guard by the first burst of light in the photo booth.

Two of my closest friends and I were crammed into the booth, the air thick as our shoulders pressed tight against the walls.

Behind the red curtain, only half of my body fitted on the tiny stool while the rest of me hovered in mid-air. One friend balanced on the other half of the stool, while the third knelt awkwardly on the floor.

I couldn’t remember what the next pose was. Even though we had just gone over our pose plan, the flash had wiped my memory clean.

I had only learned of the vintage photo booth in Edinburgh while sipping an oat milk latte at my friend’s 30th birthday brunch, when she mentioned wanting to capture the day with a photograph.

I had seen photostrips of black-and-white sequential photographs plastered all over social media, assuming they were mementoes from a European holiday—the nostalgic keepsakes from a London, Paris or Amsterdam getaway.

Walking down a winding cobbled street off the Royal Mile, we spotted the analogue photobooth inside Stills — discreetly tucked away but visible through the glass window.

The vintage photobooth | contributed

Waiting five minutes for the photos to develop inside the machine, I paced the gallery corridor, looking at the pictures on the wall and wondering what ours would look like, secretly hoping I looked okay.

With a clunk, our photo strip came out. “It’s wet!” I said. The paper was damp, the images glossy and tacky to the touch.

This was not my first time inside a photobooth. In my large wallet, at the bottom of a tote bag I rarely use, there’s a collection of digital photo booth pictures taken with friends over the years.

A memory lives with each one — the time at the Fringe when I fell backwards in the booth while rushing to change poses or that night I met a stranger at a flamenco show who became a lifelong friend.

Almost as if hypnotised by the flash, something about the analogue photo booth drew me in.

Maybe it was the black-and-white, vintage feel of the photographs, the timeless look that could belong to any era, or the sense that the booth itself was imbued with history.

One evening, I went to meet David Grinly, a visual artist at Stills, who manages the booth.

The last photo booth visitors that Tuesday evening slipped away through the doors into the early autumn wind. A puddle of spilt coffee on the black-and-white checkered floor of the booth was evidence of a busy day.

David stepped inside the booth as I poked my head in. With one smooth motion, he swung the white wall displaying the instructions and card tap machine open like a door.

Inside was a hidden world of shiny metal bolts and nuts, resembling the interior of a clock — an intricate mechanism with turning wheels that triggered a chain reaction the moment the camera flashed. David described it as a “teeny tiny clockwork darkroom.”

At the top sat a roll of paper. Once the photos were taken, a small guillotine cut the strip of four images, which then moved on to the colour-coded chemical containers arranged in a circle.

A metal arm repeatedly dipped and pulled each strip in a motion akin to steeping a tea bag — from developer to water, then bleach, toner, and finally water again, before it was released through the small opening outside.

There’s a romance about the photo booth. When I think of my grandparents, I picture them inside a vintage photo booth frame.

Without a photographer or witnesses behind the red curtain, the booth becomes a space both private and public — that is, as long as you catch the photo on the other side. As other retro technologies such as typewriters and vinyl records return to the mainstream, the analogue photo booth remains uniquely personal. After all, you are the subject.

This autumn brings a double celebration––100 years since Anatol Josepho invented the photo booth in 1925, and one year since the booth at Stills first opened last October.

While the booth acts as a fundraiser to help Stills continue providing photography resources for the community, it has also become a cherished spot for capturing memories, with around 100 photos taken each day.

Each analogue photo booth has a story that is preserved by a network of operators and enthusiasts. Few worldwide can service these vintage machines despite their popularity.

Rafael Hortala-Vallve from Autofoto, a London-based operator and technician, helped set up the Edinburgh booth.

He shared that there are “around 300 booths in use worldwide (most of them in the US) and there might be about 200 more to be restored in people's warehouses, etc”.

Rafale mentioned that one booth in London used to be in a prison in Alaska. The Edinburgh booth’s history was more difficult to trace, as it had been acquired from two guys in the US: Mike and Max.

Mike told me the booth had come from New York, though no specifics were known. Max added that some parts had naturally been replaced over time due to damage and were sourced from other booths.

When I asked Max why he thought the photo booth had made a comeback, he simply wrote back: “Analog photo booth came back already.” Perhaps they never left.

I like to imagine the booth somewhere on Broadway. I picture it during the Roaring Twenties. Tasselled sequin dresses swishing in and out, flashes catching quick smiles. I picture it somewhere, witnessing people’s lives before being forgotten, then somehow finding its way to Edinburgh.

Lisa Simonis is a writer, artist and art historian currently based in Edinburgh