Episode 26: From Russia with Photobooths | All Through a Lens: A Podcast About Film Photography

On this week’s show we are laser-focused upon photobooths! Where did they come from and where have they gone? And what were they doing along the way? We’ll also be talking to Breanna Conley Saxon (@saybrebooth on IG) about … photobooths! She’s got a few and we get to talk to her about them! There’s the answering machine and zine reviews too. (We’ve even got some photobooth sound effects provided by Bre!)

After a bit of chitty chattery (Vania’s been surfing, Eric’s been not), we push the button on the answering machine. This episode’s question is:

Do you compose differently for color vs. black & white?

After listening to you folks, we gave our answers too.

Breanna Conley Saxon

LET’S CALL BRE!

This episode, we gave a call to Breanna Conley Saxon (@saybrebooth on IG). Unlike most of us, she collects photobooths. Her journey has taken her from one coast to the other. From a Alabama thrift store to a Russian in Pennsylvania. And another Russian in California. It’s a weird tale, so hold tight.

We asked her everything we could think of about photobooths – from how she got her first one, how she learned to restore them and keep them running. Simple questions, but it’s quite a story.

Here are a few of her strips:

A QUICKISH HISTORY OF PHOTOBOOTHS

If you Google, “who invented the photo booth,” Google will tell you that it was Anatol Josepho in 1925. And that’s not exactly wrong. But it’s not exactly right, either. Josepho’s story is the most interesting and the most successful, but he wasn’t the first.

But who can resist the tail of a poor young man fleeing Siberia and attaining the American Dream? We sure can’t, so we’re going to talk about this fellow soon enough. But first we’ll dig into the 1800s to figure out where this whole idea came from.