Of course, it made total and complete sense to me during the busiest summer of my life (which, writing this over a year later, is comical) to plan an impromptu 48 hours back in my home city to see my favourite band, my favourite person, and of course my favourite booth.

Fred Aldous is a special place for many reasons, but for me (for a very long time) it was everything. This isn’t a blog about my life prior to starting this journey, but as important context, I was a kid who was always creative without ever being allowed to be. I’ve always drawn or painted or been a photographer - and Fred Aldous was Mecca for supplies and inspiration and community.

When I had my daughter, Evelyn, aged 20, Fred Aldous was where I bought baby books about art, and supplies to scrapbook all of her baby pictures and mementos, and in 2012, when their first analog Model 17 booth arrived from Auto-Photo Canada in Montreal, it changed my life.

I was working minimum wage jobs and juggling life as a single parent, so money was neither frequent nor plentiful, but somehow every weekend that I had with her I managed to find the £4 (now £6!) to squeeze inside our special 14sqft box and leave with a picture of my entire universe.

In 2013, when they added a Model 17C/T5/M22 (depending who you ask) colour booth to their repertoire, I was feral.

By this point I had been hunting for photobooths since we lost the last original one in Victoria train station around 2005, and after discovering photobooth.net I had managed to find a couple on a serendipitous trip I took to NYC with college in 2008 - so after four long years I thought this was the best thing to ever happen to me.

When the IPC rolled around in 2016, I took the day off work specifically to head down to try and meet Kate Tyler and Meags Fitzgerald (two artists I had followed for some time), only to chicken out at the last minute, convinced everyone would think I was an idiot.

(I can’t stress how much of a different person I am now).

This still remains one of my biggest regrets, mostly because of all of the relationships I could have had with people in a different life, or maybe the confidence to get more creative with booths, who knows. I’ve spent a lot of time lamenting my life before 2024.

It became our safe space, and a way to document us growing up together when there was no one else around to do it, and something we were lucky to experience for 10 years before the end of colour finally came in December 2023 (which I was able to use whilst pregnant with Vinnie, in town to look after my mum whilst she was having chemo, but that’s a story for a different feelings-dump Substack).

So when I land off the red-eye flight back in my hometown, I run straight to Stevenson Square to use the booth. Only, it’s not the booth. She looks almost identical, but the M17 that I’m staring at is actually a twin, named Florence.

George (the original) is currently in Italy having some work done to make sure she’s ready for the next 15 years in the shop, and Florence (aptly named after where she was restored) is in her place.

When I arrive there is a line, maybe 12 people, which is a first for me, and I am both happy and equally annoyed that “my” booth is busy.

I had been talking to Mark Aldous (yes, a business in the same family for 140 years) about my visit and we had planned to meet up the next day, so for tonight I was busy getting ready to scream out my lungs in a room full of people I’ve known my whole life.

Full to the brim from being with my favourite people, I make my way back to Fred Aldous on the Saturday afternoon and meet Mark. We talk about everything I can think of to do with booths. He shows me “in the back”, which is the equivalent for some people as backstage at Disney, and I try not to look like a complete psychopath. He shows me products they’re working on for their photobooth range (I buy all of it) and kindly gives me samples so we can have them represented at the convention in NYC. Do I feel like some sort of international ambassador for the convention? Yes. Does this feel like a fever dream? Also yes.

I turn a corner and see their colour booth is still here. I audibly gasp when I see her.

The TL;DR: this booth operates with a completely different internal system (not a dip and dunk, but rollers and pumps and conveyor belts get your strip from A to B) and with the cessation of colour paper and chem being manufactured, there hasn’t been a way to MacGyver it to work with black and white chemistry. But we live in hope.

What’s also waiting around the corner is an M21 (Freda) they’ve been hiding in the basement whilst they get her up and running. Mark graciously lets me take a test strip, although he warns the chems are likely dead (I don’t care). The strips are a disaster but still completely perfect.

He shows me years and years of test strips of people who worked here, famous people who visited, the 2016 convention, and I just feel so lucky to be able to peek behind the scenes of a space I’ve loved for so long. Their tagline is Make Anything, and they’re not lying. Everything from laser cutting to embroidery happens in this basement warehouse. We talk about their booths and their plans for the future. The universal understanding of scarcity of parts, their relationships with different people in the community, everything. I also get to fulfil a decade-long dream of meeting their official mascot Morbus the Corgi, who is somewhat of a local celebrity. I know already that my suitcases are going to be overweight in the journey home, but it doesn’t stop me from panic-grabbing even more photobooth and Manchester related merch.

Sadly their team can’t make it to the convention, but we agree to keep in touch. I’m working on getting paper and chem to them in order to get the colour booth running one last time (a girl can dream, but I’ve done everything else I said I was going to do), and we say goodbye. For me personally, being able to give them one more run, after all that booth has given me, would be everything.

Alas I can’t stay here forever (although along with everything else the homesickness is at critical mass this trip) so I make my way upstairs to line up for my booth one last time.

I time it perfectly to meet my best friend, and finally, after 20 years, actually get a strip together - which I think might be one of my favourites of all time.

If you’re starting here, I would encourage you to read Part 1 first, for my disclaimer and some important context.

Anyway.

The morning starts with a disheveled trip to fedex to attempt to ship the artifacts we had collected from Jim’s collection.

Writing this so long after the AUTOPHOTO opening is strange because I know they are out in the world and no longer being kept as a surprise, but I still feel wildly protective over them. We buy heavy duty poster tubes and meticulously match up by size, and carefully roll decades of original blueprints ready for shipping.

It becomes increasingly obvious as we roll drawings made in the 1940s that these will in fact not be shipped and they will not be leaving our sight until we can figure out a way for Bre to get them on the plane with her.

Back to Hilhaven we go, this time thankfully there isn’t a full scale family barbecue happening outside and “B” has dug out 10 or 11 filling boxes full of strips.

He’s convinced there’s even more somewhere, but this is a good start and frankly still incredibly overwhelming. He shows us test strips from the technician who has been servicing this booth for him since the beginning (who we have since met!) but It’s around 2pm and him and his girlfriend are leaving the house.

He invites us to take our time and stay as long as we need which is a little bit surreal, but I guess rich people are just used to having people coming and going from their house whether they are there or not and we appreciate the privacy so that we can freak out without an audience.

I open the first binder - Pete Wentz from fall out boy. Cool cool cool.

Next binder, a very very famous female singer flashing her boobs to the camera.

The next binder? Megan Markle.

In my head, the Hilhaven book of strips existed in a vaccum that ended in 2003, but of course the booth has still been operating all this time so in front of us is a living archive of the last 30 years of celebrities in LA.

We take our time but along with all of the instantly recognizable faces, are binders full of personal friends and family, so we do our best to separate them as far as public interest and start pulling strips we definitely want to have on display.

Our only parameter is that they should be relatively instantly recognizable faces, so that the average person coming into our space will know who they are.

We land on 40 strips pulled in total - which took a lot of self restraint.

As instructed, we put the strips we were interested in in an envelope with our details, and the deal was that “B” was going to bring them with him to NYC and we would collect them from him in person to put in AUTOPHOTO.

Leaving the house I am absolutely overwhelmed with how I’m even going to begin to write about all of this? What is life? How is this my job?

We take two farewell strips from the booth because we couldn’t not, and head out of the front gate.

It’s going to take a few days (weeks, months, possibly years) to recover from today, but I only have one full day left in LA and I’m determined to make the most of it including visiting as many booths as I can, and next on the list I feel is a pivotal moment in this insane boothing journey because I’m about to meet Tarreyn IRL (another thing that a year later feels insane because of just how important she is in my life).

The Vidiots booth, an M21, has been on my list for such a long time, with her cute baby pink exterior, vintage wallpaper interior. and DIY collaged display sign, she’s just gorgeous. Tarreyn meets us there and we jump straight into quick strip relays with all three of us and talking about everything we’ve been up to in town. I’m sure my eyes are completely glazed over and that I am mumbling - but meeting Tarreyn genuinely feels like meeting someone I was friends with in a past life.

We joke (now) about being the same person in a different font and the longer we know each other the more that becomes apparent.

She points us up the street to Walt’s, the next booth we’re going to try and squeeze in before heading to dinner with Mike, so we move the car and drive up the block.

Head through Walt’s and out into the back patio and you’re met with a little almost custom built concrete cubby with a perfect M17C nestled inside.

The outside of the little booth corner has been painted in the colours of the French national flag and reads “French Foto Follies” and perfectly matches the red white and blue in the booth display sign. Chems are dying so we get some beautiful sepia strips of all three of us (so that we can each keep one of course) before we have to say our goodbyes ready to head back to the hotel.

Bre had been desperately trying to squeeze in some time by the pool and i was doing my best to try and facilitate it! Not before stopping off at a dicks sporting goods to try and find something big enough for the multiple poster tubes we have to figure out how we’re getting back to NYC. We landed on a bag meant for maybe snowboarding boots? and made sure they all fit before driving off.

Dinner was cute, but you’re not reading this because you’re interested in our food. We headed back to the room around 9.30.

At this point, I’m looking at Google Maps, looking at the clock, looking at my list of booths i still want to visit (or ones I still can visit based on opening times etc) and debating what to do. There are 7 left in bars spread across the city. I barely have to open my mouth to suggest going and trying to tick them off my list before Bre is fully sold, getting shoes on, and heading out the door (this among many reasons, is why we’re such good friends lol)

1212 in Santa Monica - I am immediately aware I’m underdressed. We arrive to find a huge line out front (of course, it’s a Saturday night, what are days of the week anymore) but we talk to the host and we say we’re here to fix the booth. lol.

If you don’t try the answer will always be no.

We must have looked believable - she ushers us in and we get the booth to ourselves down a side corridor at the back of the room. A beautiful M17 with a full custom 1212 branded wrap. The font on this logo strip is some of my favourite (and I have yet to master it with the same level of precision as Mike). But we don’t have time to play if we’re trying to hit all of the bar booths in one night so off we go to stop number two.

Flamingo bar is a dream, as someone who cut their teeth in The Village in Manchester working in a gay bar, I feel so at home in this gloriously pink and outrageous space. Big booty hoe is playing as we approach the booth, so both our asses eventually end up in frame.

A Model 17 with a custom leopard curtain, lost strips on the display, and a giant pink flamingo on top, of course I have no notes. I’m already promising myself that I need to come back with less of a time crunch and take Rick to all of these places.

Next in the magical mystical late night booth tour is Verdugo, a 21HS (which an auto photo tech will tell me meant Hot Springs but I’m still a little dubious about that) in another LA stalwart of a dive bar.

Strips are a little light, but I’m wearing a white t shirt so it’s my fault.

I narrowly missed out on visiting Cha Cha in 2023. We came as a family to LA for a whistle stop weekend because Rick was attending a convention. I was 3 months pregnant with Vinnie, plagued by morning sickness and the difficulties of looking after a 3 year old in the city, so just didn’t have it in me to venture out here after the kids were in bed. This was the trip that I very loudly exclaimed that I hated LA and I was never coming back.

Pretty sure the city has far surpassed redemption.

Anyway, this bottle cap covered, completely trashed inside 21 is recessed into the wall, where I hope she lives forever, in possibly the most well known bar in Silver Lake. I fall in love with it immediately and had we not been on a tight schedule i’d have probably stayed here all night.

Short stop. Another line round the block. Two very big very stoic looking bouncers who when we said we were here to service the photobooth absolutely called our bluff. They tell us it’s broken. Bre’s like “great we’re here to fix it”. She’s betting on the fact that she has a key somewhere in her infamous fanny pack (which is an Aladdin’s cave of sorts, and I have no idea how she knows what she has in there)

Bouncer is looking over the both of us, waiting for Bre to find the key, knowing full well we’re getting dragged out of there if we don’t, but she pulls it from the pocket like Excalibur from the lake and opens the booth. He softens immediately and leaves us to fixing whatever is wrong. It looks like a paper jam, along with two inches of spilled water inside the floor of the booth, so we clean up, make sure everything is working, and a line is forming around us as we test.

This M21 covered in lost strips is a busy busy booth and it feels kind of neat to be able to get her back up and running smoothly just by chance so people can enjoy her on a Saturday night.

She’s so busy in fact that after we’ve taken our strips, it is near impossible for me to get a picture of the booth without a crowd of people, so we leave them to it and head to Koreatown.

It’s 1am as we pull up to Love Hour, and thankfully it’s pretty quiet. We have two more stops this evening and I have summit fever.

Bre takes a strip in another classic M21 and then sits outside troubleshooting with a tech - it’s funny to now be fully ingrained in the AUTOPHOTO ecosystem but these early days I honestly just spent most of the time wondering how she does it.

We attempt a silly strip where we look like we’re sinking but we’re shit at it and it’s hilarious so we head to the last stop of the night.

Phoenix closes at 2am, as per Google Maps, so when we rock up at 1.25 to locked doors we knock on the window and plead with the staff closing up for the night. We assure them we’re only there to check on the booth and that we will be in and out in 10 minutes and they graciously let us in to do our thing.

3 quick strips in the last M21 of the night - we were out by 1.38. We did it, all 7 of the bar booths that were left on my list (just missing another secret one that I promised Mike I wouldn’t go to without him) and then there’s two more daytime booths to try and attempt before the airport tomorrow….

The most amazing thing about the whole evening is the fact we managed to find parking at every single venue, an LA miracle

Wake up, last hotel breakfast, drive out to Hermosa Beach for when the store housing this last booth opens at 10am. Perfect timing.

An absolutely adorable little gift shop at Curious with an adorable little booth. It’s been there for years and the owners hav absolutely maximized the space around it by turning the outside of the booth into card displays and a collection of tchotchkes on top.

By the time we finish up at this booth it becomes apparent that I won’t make it to Killer Fitness (which has since gone) because Mike wants us to meet him back at Walt’s before we leave.

He’s changing chem and we’re helping. This also means I get to watch him work, so I’m not going to say no.

We’re cutting it fine with the airport but we arrive in time to help with chem change, test the booth, Mike tells Bre that he thinks I’m “one of us” which is the perfect end to a pretty perfect trip.

I’m missing 5 booths from my list (and more have opened since) so I know I’ll be back, but we have to race to the airport and we make it by the skin of our teeth.

I throw the AirTag from my husbands car keys into the bag of poster tubes so Bre can track it, and we go our separate ways on separate flights.

WTF LA?

None of this is intending to promote, or support, him in any way - but it would be disingenuous of me to exclude him. I will refer to him as “B” not to distance myself, but as to not draw attention to his name.

Believe women.

Ok.

As with most of my adventures, the planning of this one had been in the works for a while. One of the more interesting sides to my new job has been conceptualising all of the wonderful things that we hope to include in AUTOPHOTO for the convention and beyond. One of the things, or many of the things should I say, at the top of my list would be the collection of celebrity photostrips that were captured in the Hilhaven Photobooth in the early 2000s. Hilhaven Lodge, previously owned by Ingrid Bergman and home to legends such as Kim Novak and James Caan, became a household name amongst booth enthusiasts after its most recent owner “B” installed a photobooth outside the guesthouse around 1999.

The subsequent book of photostrips published in 2003 (along with the MTV TRL book a year earlier) stands as probably the last glimpse into candid portraits of celebrities - away from the scrutiny of paparazzi and tabloids. “B” was very well connected in Hollywood, and the book features everyone from Michael Jackson to Hilary Clinton at the turn of the millennium. The search began.

The odds of this ever happening are probably close to a million to one, but I was determined, so I started making lists of all of the ways I could possibly get in touch with “B”.

I paid for membership to PR agency directories, the white pages for the who’s who of Hollywood, and emailed publicists and managers and personal assistants - basically anyone I could find that might be vaguely still connected and could get my pitch to “B”.

A few weeks go by and I have zero replies, and I was swiftly running out of ideas of how else I could get in touch (short of flying to LA and turning up at his doorstep, for a house with no listed address). On a Hail Mary, I sent him a DM on instagram. This was my (embarrassing) last ditch attempt to make contact - and by some miracle it actually worked.

June 13th 2025

“Hi “B” This might be a long shot, but I’m a believer of “if you don’t ask, the answer is always no”.

We are opening a photobooth gallery and museum in the heart of downtown manhattan and would love to talk to you about the photobooth at Hillhaven, and the possibility of viewing your archive - and maybe displaying some of the strips on loan.

This year marks 100 years of the analog photobooth, with Anatol Josepho (a Russian Jewish immigrant) placing the first ever booth on broadway in 1925. We’re hoping to tell his story, along with the last 100 years, in a space dedicated to all things photobooth.

I’d love to tell you all about it!

Thank you,

Emily”

His response? “Sure, this is my cell, let’s talk Monday”

Absolutely insane.

Anyway, I haven’t told Bre about any of this at this point - I don’t want to over promise something if I had no chance of delivering, but Monday rolls around and after a surprisingly brief phone call he very quickly agrees that I can come and view his (very extensive) collection of photostrips in person at Hilhaven when he is next back in LA at the beginning of July.

Ok. Cool. Wtf. Ok.

I call Bre, I fill her in, we both have a mild freak out about the possibility of having these strips on display, and all of the logistics that come along with that - not to mention first having to get to LA during the busiest summer of our entire lives. (Re-reading my first draft of this entry almost a year later as we actually head into an even busier year is comical).

I start arranging everything, and book flights for the day after my birthday to go to LA for 4 days with Bre.

Of course this is the reason for the trip, but by this point you know me, and there are about 22 photobooths with my name written all over them, and I’m determined to cram a lot into a short trip out west.

The flight out to LAX was largely uneventful, not counting sitting next to a Buddhist monk who prayed the whole flight and was incredibly calming.

I landed around 4pm and went straight to rent a car and drive down to Long Beach to meet Bre and Mike who was just starting his rounds.

Mike has been Bre’s mentor for the best part of 10 years, and if I achieve nothing else this week I hoped it would be that Mike thinks I’m alright.

I pull up in the parking lot and meet them outside the doors of our first booth stop of the afternoon - the wood panelled classic M21 at The Hawk. Growing up in Manchester where it is perpetually grey and cloudy, I haven’t had a lot of experience with dive bars in bright daylight so it takes my eyes a second to adjust to the darkeness inside. This is a beautiful booth, well used but in great shape - featuring two full “wall of shame” frames full of photostrips from years gone by.

Mike absolutely will not let me pay (this is so funny reading back almost 8 months later, and to anyone who knows how our relationship has evolved since then) so I swipe his test card and take a strip alone, and one with Bre, before getting to look inside and be nosey.

Mike’s time is valuable, and he finds my love affair with booths pretty amusing, so we head to the next stop pretty quickly. Alex’s Bar has had a booth for 25 years, which is proudly displayed within the logo on the white borders of their strips. We convince Mike to do a rely strip of the three of us, which I tried to film whilst also participating in. Chaos. But the booth just needed a quick topping off an the test strips look perfect so it’s like quick fire rounds of boothing.

The Blind Donkey, another long beach staple, is a model 21HS that is set recessed into the wall under the stairs you have to walk down to get into the bar. I can only hope that for the next 40 years no one ever has to figure out how to move it. A couple of lost strips adorn the sides, the booth was “out of order”  it upon inspection nothing seems wrong so again, Mike swipes his card despite my protesting, and we get another strip all together before taking a little break and have a drink at the bar - after all it’s after 5 (I have my regular Diet Coke and hold it together that it’s now after 10pm my time)

But alas, it is not the end of our night, Mike is eager for us to go back to his workshop so he can show me around (you’ll hear no complains from me despite how tired I am already) so we head out into the sunset tinted streets of long beach and I brace myself for freeway driving in LA.

Mikes shop is of course a treasure trove. Rows of spare parts, bins full of every small accessory one needs to keeps these booths running. It’s not my job to describe his warehouse to the world, but I feel lucky to get the opportunity to see inside and ask approximate 7835610 questions.

But that’s not all, and we do a whistle stop tour of his off-site units, including where he has a couple of special booths in storage. To say these are unicorns would be an understatement.

It also gives us the chance to pick up some incredibly special pieces that came from Jim Henderson (“the godfather”) that we’re hoping to have displayed at AUTOPHOTO, which I know felt like a very full circle moment for Bre.

By this point it’s getting late for us east coasters, so we call it an early night and head to the hotel to check in and decompress - another insanely busy day of boothing up tomorrow along with the main excursion of the trip and heading to Hilhaven Lodge.

Tiny’s

Backstage

IYKYK

The Hunt

4100

Are all up on the list before we get there so let’s get cracking.

Tiny’s is another perfect little dive bar, walls and frames full of strips everywhere you look - a model 21 covered with corkboard so people can pin their strips directly to the booth. One thing I’m learning to love a little more about these dive bar booths is that so many of the strips have logos, helpful for keeping track of which is which when we’re hitting double digits on this trip.

Backstage bar up next, and another classic M21 with years and years worth of single frames cut and stuck to the outside - no notes, strips are of course perfect.

The next stop is redacted, it’s a case of IYKYK - and the booth has since moved.

The hunt vintage is a great little spot for a booth (or two, or three) and this beautiful model 14 looks right at home alongside a large open space full of mid century modern furniture and home decor. Michael, the store’s owner, has a healthy collection of vintage playboy magazines which make excellent props, and I love love love the way you can see the other open side of the 13 from outside the shop window, so few 14s have both sides accessible for use and this feels like a good compromise.

We squeeze in a quick stop to 4100 bar to see the strip wall of fame and quickly use the booth before a chem change (the strips are bleach stained and dark but of course they’re all still perfect to me) and then we have to head off to the main event - on the 4th of July no less.

“B” and I have been in regular contact over the past few weeks and he graciously squeezed us into his schedule while he was back in town for a couple of days. He has given us specific instructions to find the house, as it’s not listed on Google Maps and nor does the zip code get you to where you need to be. We arrive on time (something I always treat as important) and wait to be buzzed in at the gate. The entrance and driveway are unassuming compared to the legacy of this small historical LA home.

We walked into what can only be described as a full family Fourth of July celebration. “B”’s mom welcomes us in with open arms, his younger brothers are cooking food on the barbecue, and a handful of family and friends are sat around a large outside dining table waiting for dinner. I am instantly mortified that we’ve intruded but we couldn’t have been made to feel more welcome, with all of them offering us a plate and a seat at the table.

We politely decline, a mixture of embarrassment and also nervous excitement, and we start to talk to everyone about why we are there. “B” isn’t far behind and introduced himself and his girlfriend and takes us to the booth. Yep, you read that right, since 1999 the booth has been in the same spot outside of the guest lodge of Hilhaven. I almost throw up in my mouth when he lets us know that it’s turned on, with chem, and ready to use.

After Bre takes a look inside and chats briefly about maintenance. It’s at this point he offers us free rein to take as many pictures as we like and leaves us alone with the booth.

Once he’s out of sight I am fully doubled over in disbelief- my butt is about to sit in the same stool as Al Pacino. NBD. The plate says it’s a model 14S, but built in 1990 - so that’s a head scratcher. The booth still has the original coin mech and Auto-Photo signage, but has been retrofitted with a push-button to activate.

It’s still Russian paper. We take several strips each. The whole thing is overwhelming. We leave a strip of the two of us in the booth and I think my brain has blocked out a good chunk of the experience because I was just in a state of disbelief. Once we knew we were coming to see the archive, all logical questions like “is the booth still there, is the booth still in use” completely blanked from my brain so I just had no expectations that it would still be here almost 30 years later.

We calm down (a bit) and head back inside the house - while we have been freaking out “B” has been grabbing some of the folders from the archive of approximately 10,000 strips he has stored at the house. But first, we head upstairs to see a few special strips from his family collection.

Small framed single frame strips sit next to an Oscar and a Golden Globe, totally normal for a Friday afternoon. He keeps a few strips of his mother and grandmother and a few special frames from his childhood in a comically big safe, along with folders containing the “heavy hitters” of celebrity strips.

We take everything downstairs and spread out across the tables in his living room. At this point it is very hard to keep my cool. Every page we flip is more overwhelming than the last. Philip Seymour Hoffman, Hilary Clinton, Courtney Love. Name a celebrity who was around at the turn of the millennium and we’ve seen a photostrip of them in these files.

We quickly realise this archive is much much bigger than we could have imagined and we agree that not only are we now fully intruding on their family time (at one point a rabbi shows up and begins blessing one of “B”’s younger brothers) but we need some time to mentally prepare and go through as much of the archive as we can to start pulling the strips that we want for AUTOPHOTO. He suggests we come back tomorrow around the same time, we agree (whilst I am fully holding back tears at this point) and head out to dinner to debrief on whatever the fuck our lives are this week.

An honorary mention for the greatest green beans I have ever had in my life from the butchers daughter - the recipe of which is almost as high up on my wish list as the strips we’ve just seen.

Bed time.

Deep breath.

At the time of writing this, it has been seven months since I passed the very silly, very self-imposed milestone of one year into my Four Poses Five Minutes side quest.

Which means we have a lot to talk about.

Writing this so long after the “official” marker does two useful things. First, the things that were already quietly in motion before June are now out in the world, which means I don’t have to redact myself or speak in riddles. Second, enough time has passed that I can look at that first year as a complete shape rather than something I still feel obligated to describe in especially poetic or flamboyant terms.

It almost goes without saying (but I’ll say it anyway) that starting this project just eleven days after my mum died means that grief and joy are permanently entangled here. No matter how hard I try to outrun one, it shows up inside the other.

On stronger days, I’m grateful for this. I can think about her with some clarity, knowing that even if she might not have fully understood what I was doing (years of our relationship were lost to misunderstanding each other) she would still be giving me her wholehearted support. The fact that none of this would have happened if she hadn’t died is a genuinely complicated emotional knot that might never be untangled.

On bad days, I mostly just feel guilty for being happy. Which, as anyone who knew my mum would tell you, she would absolutely despise.

Since June 2024, I’ve visited almost half of the (presumed) 250 working analog photobooths in the world. When I first made this my focus, I assumed I’d maybe reach thirty if I was lucky.

On December 17, 2024, I already knew I had solid plans to stay with Bre in Connecticut on a few weeks.

The goal was to learn “the basics” as a first starting point to becoming a photobooth technician. I had very low expectations of what this could mean for me, and this was a largely unrealistic goal. I didn’t live near booths, the inquiries I had been making into leads I had tracked down were often going unanswered or came with long gaps in communication, so I was pessimistic at best. Nevertheless, I made the following note in the notes app on my phone.

It says:

“Here for accountability.

Ultimate goal for 2025 is to own three photobooths.

If I set my goal as one and it happens, I know I’ll slow down. Two more will suddenly feel silly because I already “won.”

By setting the goal at three, I leave room for joy in the first, but I don’t dilute the momentum toward something that feels larger and borderline unattainable. Otherwise I’ll end up haunted by the “what could have been”s.

This is how my brain works.

Also: fuck it. We are a speck of dust on a spinning rock hurtling through space. I can set my goals as high as I want.”

Writing this now, in January 2026, we have three photobooths placed in public spaces  and one sitting in our house (waiting for its home)

By July of last year, I had already bought three and was waiting until the end of the season in Sylvan Beach to pick up the fourth. At the time, maybe four people knew.

Absolutely. Mind-blowingly. Insane.

I know it’s a cliché to say “if you’d asked me at the beginning…,” but truly I wouldn’t have believed you.

I’ve been neglecting Substack for a few reasons, but one of the main ones is that I’ve always struggled to celebrate success. I grew up in an environment where nothing I did was ever quite good enough, and no matter what I’ve achieved (personally or professionally) I’ve never been very good at accepting praise or feeling proud of myself.

Talking to my friends outside of the photobooth sphere about what I had been up to, most of them thought I was insane. So I started to downplay it and stopped going into too much detail when they asked follow-up questions, partly out of fear of embarrassment.

I didn’t fully realize how deep this ran until I found myself seeking validation from people in this community and learning the hard way that just because you support people doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll support you back.

But those are thoughts for another day.

All of this is really just to say - whatever you decide your goal is, life is wildly and fundamentally unserious. It is short. Tomorrow is not guaranteed.

So if what you need is to chase a childhood dream as a way to pull yourself out of all-consuming grief, my advice is simple. Do it. Unapologetically. Unashamedly. With as much passion (and time and money) as you can throw at it.

Because what if it all works out?

When my brain finally caught up to the fact that we were rapidly approaching one year since she died, I knew immediately that I did not want to be at home. Is this the smartest long-term mental health strategy? Probably not. But avoidance and distraction are quite literally the only tools in my toolkit, so we’re running with it.

We could only swing a few days, so I tried to maximize things by flying out early and catching a red-eye home, trying to manufacture a longer weekend on the West Coast. And I’d be lying if I said my primary reason for going to Vancouver wasn’t photobooths. Ian of Phototronic has been restoring and running them there for the past eight years, and I’ve been mentally planning this trip since 2020.

We land on a Thursday afternoon and head straight to our apartment to decompress. That lasts about ten minutes. I’m a ten-minute drive from The American, and Ian has already taunted me by leaving a test strip in the mirror (lol, iykyk), so I’m sprinting there as fast as I can. I narrowly miss hot rocks being dropped from a balcony above on the way (ahh, BC…) and make it inside to see a beautiful example of a 17C from Montreal.

Ian later shares the lore: this was his first booth, bought fresh off a broken collarbone that had taken him out of commission for a while, and he had it delivered on site, fully intending to “figure it out” as he went. I’m so glad he did. She’s a stunning example of a Canadian booth. (He goes on to install a black background curtain for higher-contrast strips literally one day after we leave, so I’m already planning my swift return.)

I don’t stay for more than three strips, we’ve got a lot of ground to cover on this very short trip out west (subtle foreshadowing), so I head back to the apartment to attempt an early night.

The next two days are spent visiting friends on Vancouver Island, mentally calculating how we might afford a waterfront cabin (we can’t), and feeling some feelings. I’ve always believed that if you’re going to be desperately sad, you might as well be desperately sad somewhere desperately beautiful. I’ll be honest, though, it’s not really working this time.

But this isn’t a blog about Vancouver Island, so let’s fast-forward back to the mainland and the rest of the booths.

Back downtown (and after being woken by a very sad Bert at 4 a.m.) my daughter and I decide to head to Slice of Life on our own. Rick stays back with the boys; what started as growing pains has turned into a slower-morning situation so we divide and conquer. We meet Ian outside Slice, and he greets us with the biggest, warmest smile and hug.

Sheena, who owns and works at the gallery, very kindly lets us in early before a scheduled life-drawing class. There’s also a massive food festival happening nearby, and it’s about to get very busy, so I’m grateful we’ve snuck in this quiet window. Slice is home to two of Ian’s booths (four now, at the time of writing), both Model 17s, both from Montreal.

The first booth is instantly recognizable with its dark green “Photos” design. It is the same model as my twins’, just with a dark grey speckled interior so she feels familiar. Of course she does.

Ian taps his card without warning, and we’re suddenly leaping in and out for the first strip. It’s the perfect space for booths like these: an inclusive artists’ co-op celebrating local talent, plus a row of classic pinball machines for good measure.

After playing around a bit, we move to the second booth at the front of the store. Same classic Canadian finish as the booth at The American, but with darker wood. Like all booths, it’s a 10/10.

Slice also sells photobooth frames, magnets, and keychains. I buy all of them. Conscious that the space is about to fill up, we follow Ian out and head to his studio. After following along online for a few years now, I wanted to see where he’s been building his analog-inspired digital booths, and where (as he puts it) he’ll be building “future vintage” analog booths himself.

Ian has the exact right level of self-assurance. We’ve talked endlessly about booths (especially booth problems) and his attitude is always the same: things will be figured out, solutions will be found. He’s completely confident in his abilities, and somehow that confidence transfers by osmosis and gives me my own much-needed boost.

Then Rick texts. Bert is not okay.

What began as growing pains escalates quickly into us speeding back to the apartment and straight to the children’s hospital. The TL;DR: after scans, X-rays, and an overnight stay to rule out what they feared might be sepsis, it thankfully turns out to be something pretty common (but unfortunately very painful). We’re discharged the day we’re due to fly home. Thank goodness for Canadian healthcare, pediatricians, and healthcare workers full stop.

Rick heads out to buy a stroller because Bert won’t be walking for a few days, and we try to pull ourselves together after a dramatic thirty-six hours. Unsurprisingly, Bert still wants to go to a booth. So we drive to the airport via Slice to grab a few strips before we leave.

He’s feeling better (even though he still can’t move) so we make one last stop at the final booth in the city, at Hero’s Welcome. Rick parks, and I sprint in. Another excellent Canadian Model 17, this time with a cut-out window Ian installed back in the magical, mystical days of Russian paper, so you could watch the inner workings as your strip developed. The newer Ilford paper is a bit more temperamental, so you’ll just have to imagine the spider dipping and dunking your strip through the tanks.

This trip to Vancouver was impossibly short. That’s on me. And I already know I’ll be back because Ian cannot be stopped. At the time of writing this (more than six months later), he’s already installed booths five and six at Slice, and I know number seven is coming.

Quite literally running back to Vancouver as soon as we can.

Anyway.

Robert Eaton, who some of you fellow nerds may already know (and even more of you have now met after the Convention; yes, I am very behind in these updates) is the third generation of a four-generation photobooth dynasty out of Winnipeg, Manitoba. His grandfather took over an existing fleet of booths and vending machines in 1960, and under the National Vending Company name, the family went on to become the largest independent photobooth operator in Canada, with machines stretching from Vancouver Island to Newfoundland. And yet, somehow, they’ve been largely left out of the wider telling of the photobooth story.

Their story deserves its own chapter, and it’s not mine to tell, so I’ll only touch on the pieces that intersect with how I ended up here in the first place.

Stripof4.com is pure early-2000s internet. For years it’s been a tiny corner of photobooth nostalgia. Model-specific tidbits, display sign examples that haven’t been seen in decades, and a link to a Redbubble shop with surprisingly great photobooth merch that Robert designs himself. It has that unmistakable old-web energy, so most people (reasonably) assume any contact info on the site would be wildly out of date. But on a wing-and-a-prayer email in November 2024, I hit send anyway… and unknowingly opened the door to the most chaotic adventure of my entire life. At the time of writing this, this hasn’t even been the craziest adventure of this year.

My emails were answered, then not, then answered again. Fast-forward to March, and I was sitting in my friend Stacy’s part-time apartment in Chicago, typing out one last desperate “Just checking in…” to see whether Robert might, by any stretch of imagination, still have anything left in Canada. He did.

At the time, I didn’t know what to hope for. Maybe a few manuals or old display posters or a dusty topsign we could display in NYC for the photobooth museum we were planning (not a spoiler, the soft launch already happened; my life is certifiably insane). At most, I dreamed of maybe a conversation about Canadian booth history and some leads on where some of the booths eventually ended up. What I did not expect was a literal treasure trove spread across multiple storage units on the outskirts of Winnipeg.

Because Winnipeg, like Minnesota (she’s behind a paywall if you want the saga), still had snow on the ground, I had to wait a bit before I could plan the side-quest north.

By Mother’s Day weekend in May, after no fewer than 60 emails (many of which were me talking into the void), Robert finally agreed to let me and Bre come up, meet him in person, and see what he had.

It wasn’t a smooth lead-up. Robert knew the value of his collection (rightly) and he drove a hard bargain. I was immediately priced out and assumed the whole journey was dead in the snow. But once we learned what he truly had, Bre decided it was worth the investment for the museum. And that changed everything. I am grateful to Bre for many things, but her willingness to go all in on these adventures is pretty high up the list.

So. I got my ass in gear.

The plan was that I would rent a truck in London, ON and drive to Winnipeg. Bre would fly and meet me there. The reality didn’t hit until I booked the truck and started mapping the route: Ontario → Michigan → Indiana → Illinois → Wisconsin → Minnesota → North Dakota → Manitoba. In two days. And because of Robert’s schedule, I had to leave on May 24th and spend my entire wedding anniversary (the 25th) on the road. (To say I owe my husband is an understatement. Massively.) Oh, and this is also the time I’m on the phone renting a second storage unit back home because I know one isn’t going to be enough.

I could write a full post just about the drive, but here’s the tl;dr: driving a truck is terrifying until suddenly it isn’t. Border crossings in a giant vehicle are intimidating. Truck stops are weird. Cheap motor-court motels are even weirder. Wisconsin cheese is genuinely excellent. Twizzlers are an elite driving snack, and I’ve reached my capacity for how many dead deer one person can see in a single lifetime. With the right playlist, 20 hours goes by faster than it should.

I arrived in Winnipeg after Bre, and we grabbed food, decompressed, and braced ourselves. The next morning, we met Robert and followed him to the first storage unit. We knew a rough idea of what he had from a few pictures he’d sent, but when he rolled up the shutter to reveal a pristine Model 14 that he had used for events up until around 2009, plus the shell of a Model 9, we just stood there staring like kids.

Stacks of topsigns, piles of manuals, display posters, obscure parts - an absolute Aladdin’s cave. He’d even brought a Walmart bag of family photostrips: his grandfather, his father, him as a little kid (some with dates and notes in pencil on the back). He handed over route logbooks too. (Apparently paper jams have been ruining lives for at least 60 years. Comforting, in a way.)

Then he mentioned a basement unit.

We basically answered in unison: “Yes. Obviously yes.”

Down we went. After wrestling a stubborn padlock, the door opened and we both gasped. A castle top from an old Model 17, tanks, cameras, boxes of Model 9 parts that, I’ll be honest, looked like the insides of a car engine to the untrained eye.

Bre climbed in (literally) and started excavating. Then the lights went out (because of course they did) and suddenly the joke we’d made in the elevator about “this being how we die” didn’t feel quite as funny.

We were on an archaeological dig at this point. We were also being selective though - space in the truck was not unlimited. The castle top, for example, was heartbreakingly too heavy and awkward to take. I will be lamenting this for a long time.

And then, because apparently we hadn’t had enough, Robert casually mentioned a third unit. He warned us there was “nothing in there you’ll want.”

Sir. SIR.

He rolled up the door and there, just standing there as if waiting for us, was a 1980s Model 17C, the kind once seen in Montreal metro stations. I tried to play it cool (I failed). She was a shell (but lol so am I at this point), and yes, she was coming with us. Along with a vintage mechanical horse, two metal stamper machines, and a digital sticker photo machine from the 90s. (Bre and I are absolutely each other’s worst enablers)

We called it for the day, took Robert to dinner, and listened to wild story after wild story from someone who has been working on these booths since he was 6 years old.  From placing their first color booth in a Sears in the early 70s, the Newfoundland ferry Model 9, and the story about the time he took a chainsaw to an Model 17 near his Lake Winnipeg cottage after a dispute with an arcade owner I am still not emotionally recovered from. You could hear the pride and the regret in equal measure. Selling his M11 to cover taxes and storage fees, history forgotten, and a huge collection of topsigns sold that then went on to be used for cheap digital knockoffs are at the top of his list. Mostly, though, he seemed relieved that someone cared. That his family’s legacy wouldn’t just sit in a basement unit until it rotted.

The next morning, we met Robert and his nephew Rob and tackled the mammoth task of loading everything. Four hours of human-scale Tetris. I attempted to be useful, wedging stacks of topsigns between machines, sorting boxes, and trying to absorb every story Rob told me about who was who on the test strips on each display we were taking (I can now point out which of you operators have Robert’s family on your booth and which have Jeff’s from Montreal!). Eventually, Bre had to leave for her flight, and I promised I’d update her from the road.

Not before stopping at the “Centre of Canada” marker, obviously. When am I ever going to be in the middle of Manitoba again?

The drive back was somehow even longer, but I feel like I’ve been driving these trucks my whole life. The Giver is played loudly on repeat because I, too, Get The Job Done.

I stopped in Chicago to see Stacy and, because it would have been illegal not to, took a photobooth strip to document the madness. And despite Twizzlers being elite, I needed some real food before finishing the drive. Then onward: Indiana, Michigan, Ontario. By the end I was shrivelled, fried, and completely numb to my own mammoth 42 hour playlist, but I made it in one piece (and more importantly, so did my precious cargo)

My husband was expecting me to return with one booth, a Model 9 shell, and maybe a couple of parts. When he opened the back of the truck (which looked like it was bursting at the seams) I wish I’d filmed his reaction.

We called in reinforcements from friends to help us unload (including our daughter Evelyn, who made a cool $30/hour hauling boxes), moved everything into storage, and returned the truck. I just kept repeating: “What the hell am I doing!?”

I cannot wait to show you where all of this treasure is going to live.

For those of you who have been reading for a while, you already know why Mother’s Day is going to be difficult.

We celebrate it on a different day in the UK, back in March, so by the time May rolls around I’ve already been sufficiently sad for a couple of months. I decided the best thing to do was to drive my entire family the 5 hours to Sylvan Beach to visit Carello’s Arcade for the beginning of their 2025 season - the last season of the color booth that has been there for 34 years.

The drive is relatively uneventful. This is Vinnie’s longest drive so far, so we tried to plan it around nap times. Still allowing for the important pitstops for food and leg stretching, we arrive the day before the arcade opens so that we aren’t rushed. We start the day the best way in Sylvan Beach, at The Pancake House (IYKYK), and then make a point to stop at the Cross Island Chapel in Oneida, which holds the record as the world’s smallest church, only accessible by boat. A smaller version of where we were married, The Church in the Sea in Aberffraw, Anglesey (it’s worth the Google image search, I promise).

What I didn’t know when we left our house for the drive, but would soon find out, was that David and Lisa don’t actually turn on the photobooths until the end of May - despite the arcade opening on Mother’s Day weekend. Can you imagine if we had driven all the way there and arrived to no booths working? Because I can’t. David, ever the most generous and gracious of hosts, turned the booth on especially for us. Of course, I’m crying again.

There are a lot of reasons Sylvan Beach has become so special for me, but the biggest reason is the relationship I’ve had with David and Lisa, their willingness to share their family history with me, and their overwhelming kindness.

We’re not just here to celebrate (celebrate feels like the wrong word here, but my words fall short) Mother’s Day, but also to take Vinnie’s first birthday portraits in the color booth. I have spent months searching and sourcing the perfect outfits for him along with the perfect backgrounds to use (because why not) and landed on the excellent combination of a terry toweling 70s romper with a giant red “1” on the front.

The backgrounds are both vintage (although let’s be honest, I brought an entire suitcase of props and backgrounds to use over the weekend we’re here). My two favourites are a circus animal print that had its first life as a bedding set, and a banner panel meant for a quilt that says “that’s our baby”. Thank you to the thrifting gods for those two perfectly timed finds.

But before we get to Vinnie’s special portraits - mom is going first. I don’t think booths will ever stop feeling like a confessional space for me. No matter whether I’ve used one the day before or the month before, when I sit on the stool and get ready to pay, I almost always take a second to sit in gratitude that I still get to experience these spaces. I’ve talked before about the connection between my grief for my mother and my grief for the loss of these machines. It doesn’t take a genius to understand why I’m holding on to them so tightly, but even with my job and the experiences I’ve been lucky to have over these past several months, I still honestly treat every one as if it’s the last time I’m going to get to do this. And in this case, with the color booth, it just might be.

David has one roll of paper and two batches of chemicals left. Who knows how long either will last, because they’ve been stored for years. Add with the fact that photobooths have obviously been going viral left, right, and centre with more influencers running booths and discovering them, this could well be the last time I manage a color strip. So I take a deep breath and savour it, in case it is.

We take a few strips each and all squeeze in for some very chaotic family portraits before I try to wrangle Vinnie for his birthday strips.

I’m not exaggerating when I say these pictures of Vinnie are possibly the best thing I have ever seen in my whole entire life. Just how lucky we are that David and Lisa made this happen, that we were able to drive here, that everything aligned. I just feel so unbelievably lucky.

We take the kids back to the Days Inn that by the end of summer will feel like a second home for me (but more on that later, of course), and I try to organise some more of my props to head back out and use the booth by myself while the kids get an early night.

Some low grade (because the high grade ones are expensive) theatrical lighting gels, my trusted printed letters, and a few different backgrounds are my weapons of choice for this evening, and I arrive back at the arcade ready to play.

I have spent a lot of time thinking about the ethics of me taking a lot of color strips. I think I’ve landed somewhere in the space of: I know I’m encouraging as many people as possible to come and use the booth before the chems and paper run out, so I’m not gatekeeping to use it all myself.

With that in mind, I finish up for the evening after making a couple of pieces of work I’ve had written in notebooks since I was a teenager and head back to the hotel to help wrangle the kids for bedtime.

We start Mother’s Day again at The Pancake House before coming to use the booth, where I try to work with military precision to make some special sets of strips I tried to do in Berlin but ran out of time.

Using the letters I carry around with me, I make pieces with everyone’s name (the joke will be on me when I wait until later tonight to make my own one, and get to the arcade after David has closed for the night because I was too busy taking pictures of the sunset over the lake).

While we’re hopping in and out of the booth I meet Suzanne - who has lived in Sylvan Beach her whole life and has been using the booths here since Larry bought them in the 1990s. We chat about my silly little project and where it’s taken me, my aspirations for booths as a whole, and the fate of the color booth at the arcade. She immediately takes my number and tells me she has so many strips to show me (including original ones when the booth was running with a 53mm camera) and that she knows other people locally who would love to show me their strips. She spends some time pointing out faces on the display of David’s black and white booth, showing me which people are local and which of them have already sadly passed away.

I also get invited to her son’s 21st birthday party BBQ in July (but I don’t manage to make it). One of my favourite parts of these adventures will always be hearing the stories of people I meet and their favourite photobooth memories, because everyone has a story.

I finish up the last couple of strips and say goodbye to David and Lisa. I tell them I don’t know if I’ll make it back again before the end of the season (spoiler: I come back in June, July, August, and their last day open on Sept 1st because of course I do), and we head to the hotel for our last night - a stack of strips sticking out of a Carello’s Carousel and Arcade branded plastic cup - the nostalgic, important souvenir.

The drive back home is largely uneventful, except for a couple of emails that (again) are going to completely change my life.

What is going on?!

What I haven’t mentioned so freely in my posts along this journey (and there are still some parts I want to keep private until I’m…

Read more

A mere nine days after getting back from London, I’m in the car at 6 a.m., once again headed to Chicago. This time, though, I’m a newly minted AutoPhoto employee, en route to supervise a booth move for the first time.

Somewhere in the four weeks since leaving Bre’s house in Connecticut, passing remarks about working alongside her have turned into a formal job offer. As I hit the skyway, the emotion of it all creeps in, as it usually does on long drives, and I realise that in just eight short months of starting this project I’ve somehow manifested my dream job. Twenty-three-year-old me could never have imagined this, but here I am with the title of Operations Manager for an analog photobooth company.

There isn’t much time for reflection. I’m headed straight to meet Bre to move a booth from Palmhouse in Evanston to its beautiful new home at Vintage House. Traffic holds me up, so Bre, the ever-seasoned professional, has already loaded and moved the booth by herself by the time I arrive an hour behind schedule. As I pull up, truck squarely in front of me, I see Colin from Block Club Chicago. He’s here to photograph us moving this Model 17 beauty for an article about Bre and her tenure as the guardian of the city’s booths. It’s at this point I realise I probably shouldn’t have worn sweatpants with holes in them and maybe could have slapped on at least a bit of lipstick? Sigh.

We roll the booth on furniture dollies and onto the liftgate, steadying it as Bre lowers us to the ground. My heart (and breakfast) jump into my throat as the booth tips slightly, but we manage without incident. We casually roll it through midday Wicker Park traffic and across the street to Vintage House. Moving a giant photobooth in the middle of the day attracts plenty of spectators, with people shouting offers of help as they pass.

Once inside, we position her at the back of Maddie Rogers’ beautifully curated store. Maddie, a stalwart of Chicago’s pre-loved community, has been running vintage markets for years, and this is her latest venture. We spend the next few hours lovingly setting up the booth for its new residency, in between Colin taking portraits of both Bre and Maddie for separate features. The pink stir sticks we ordered back in February are the star of the show. Chemicals in, alignment checked, signage swapped, and everything cleaned, we share takeout tacos on the floor and test the booth. The exposure is perfect, of course.

This is routine for Bre, and it’s such a privilege to have such a patient mentor (even when I accidentally lock the back door behind us and we have to walk around the building in the rain). Bre is staying with her Chicago tech, Sam, while I’m at a downtown hotel, so we call it an early night ready for the next day’s adventures.

I’ve been trying to make time to see the A & A Studios team on every Chicago visit, but the stars haven’t aligned until now. Bre is heading there to talk to Anthony about updated strobes, and I’m happily tagging along to learn as much as I can. I pick up coffees and breakfast like I’m living my own “Emily in Chicago” spin-off and we head to their studio for me to finally meet Kati, Anthony, and the rest of the team.

I’m not sure what I expected, but even if I’d been prepared I’d still have been blown away by the space. A 1940s Photomatic in one corner, a classic Montreal-style Model 17 in another, and a beautiful Model 11 in between. The walls and curio cabinets are filled with a professional history (and personal collections) spanning nearly 20 years of working with booths. In the workshop, high-quality digital booths are lined up alongside original top signs and fragments of vintage cabinets. I could happily spend the next five years exploring and still find something new.

Bre and Anthony get straight to work testing the new flash box and strobe setup she’s brought. I follow along as much as I can. I am a very (very) humble student and my current weakness is more on the electrical side than the mechanical, so I record most of Anthony’s explanations for later study and jot down a few questions before I give in to the urge to explore more. Kati is every bit as lovely and warm as she comes across online and takes time out of her incredibly busy day to show me more of Anthony’s collection, including early photobooth portraits and a rare LAPD strip from an early Model 100A in the 1950s that leaves my jaw on the floor - these really are rare.

I could have stayed there all day, but Anthony is busy, and he’s already been incredibly generous with his time. With some special gifts that I’ll talk about later (that might be tricky to get across the border, if that gives any eagle-eyed readers a clue) we head out to do the rounds of Bre’s Chicago fleet.

First stop is Rainbo Club, currently out of service. We top off developer, clear chemical buildup on the delivery unit, and recreate my crying-in-the-booth pictures from my first Chicago visit in August last year. A real full-circle moment, only this time without gouging a hole in my car (that for the sake of transparency, still hasn’t been repaired). As we work, we meet Jimmy, who is at least four beers deep by 6 p.m. on a Sunday. Somehow he ends up taking a strip with both of us but I’m not entirely sure he knew what was going on. Bre asks who’s keeping it. Jimmy and I answer simultaneously, so it comes down to rock-paper-scissors. I lose. Somewhere in Chicago on a Monday morning, I imagine there was a very confused man with a photostrip in his pocket featuring two women he doesn’t know. You’re welcome.

Next is Cole’s, where a Model 21 has strobe issues. This is largely why Bre’s updating some of them. The short version is that after three hours, a beer break, and Stacy showing up to offer more help, the strobe still isn’t working. With a band starting up in the next room, making it too loud to think, we call it a night and head to our respective rooms but not before all three of us squeeze into the front of the rental car in what was not our finest logistical moment.

The last morning is spent with the three of us at breakfast, then at Stacy’s part-time apartment. She’s still splitting her time between Chicago and Philly, and has been making beautiful block prints while she’s been here of booths carved from wood. I’m proud to have one in my collection and can’t wait for the rest of you to see them once she’s printed more.

We finish some admin, print new pricing stickers for the Vintage House booth, and I answer an email that will change my life…but that’s a story for another post.

I, of course, cry most of the way home. Again.

Travelling with two small children isn’t for the faint-hearted, but I started this journey when Vinnie was a newborn, so that should give you an idea of how used to it he is by now.

We navigate the plane ride back to London and check into our rather fancy hotel for the next two nights -The Standard. Yes, it has a booth, and yes, that’s the reason we’re staying there. The booth is in the hotel bar, which is inconveniently closed for a private event when we arrive, so we lean into an unplanned quiet night with room service and cartoons on the TV for the kids. My daughter arrives back in the city at the same time as we do, so it’s all five of us for the final full day in London, with two East London booths on the agenda.

Hackney Bridge gives us an excuse to get up and out early for Sunday breakfast before we visit the booth. It’s been a long time since I’ve navigated the trip from West to East London, but we manage it without arguments, and the kids are all in a brilliant mood. After the obligatory stop at the Breakfast Club (I know, I know, but it’s relatively child-friendly), we head over to the booth at Hackney Bridge.

It looks right at home. Another gorgeous Canadian Mosel 17A, with outdoor-access, and a gorgeous original top sign. Getting up early pays off, and we have the booth to ourselves. This gives us a rare chance to take some strips of just me and my husband (while our oldest keeps an eye on both boys), along with the most precious of all: full family shots.

When I’ve made a significant enough dent in my bank balance, I leave a coin pouch for someone to find and we head to the next booth of the day and the penultimate booth of the trip: Rio Cinema.

Navigating East London tube stations without lift access is no joke with a giant stroller, but we manage it without incident (we’re on a roll) and arrive at Rio just as they’re opening for the matinee.

This booth has been on my radar since around 2015, having previously lived in Beyond Retro in Brighton. I’d missed it on two separate occasions due to train delays on trips down south, so this felt like redemption. My friend Hassan joins us for the last time on this trip (I’m not ready to say goodbye yet) and entertains Bert in the lobby with snacks and games while I spend some time with this beautiful Model 17 with it’s familiar Montreal-standard small cream stool and wooden veneer interior. The cinema itself is a treasure trove of vintage, with VHS tapes lining the walls. My only complaint is that we didn’t have enough time to stay and catch a movie.

Eventually, the time comes and I have to say goodbye to Hassan. I’ve mentioned it before, but one of the most unexpected joys of this week in London has been how much time we’ve been able to spend together (the most since we were probably 17) which has honestly felt like such a gift. But I’ve booked tickets to the Barbican Conservatory, so we have to dash. We tumble into a black cab, waving him off through the window.

One of the things that has made this trip one of the best we’ve ever taken (high praise from my often reluctant-travelling husband) has been the more relaxed approach we’ve had to planning. We’ve avoided cramming too much into the days and kept our bookings flexible wherever we could. The Barbican was non-negotiable for me (my first visit since my daughter was about five) and I’m so glad we made it work.

Suitably tired and hungry, we take a leisurely walk back toward the hotel (via Carnaby Street for some good ramen and overpriced souvenirs) for our last night in the city. I’m very thankful to past Emily for booking us in at The Standard. We get the kids fed and settled, and I start the process of packing our many cases before heading down to the hotel bar to visit the final booth of the trip on my own.

An absolutely stunning refurbished Model 11, its classic teal exterior now replaced with a rich deep red to match the surroundings. This booth was the only reason I booked us here. Thankfully it’s a quiet Sunday night, so I have the booth almost entirely to myself. I take the opportunity to work on a lettering piece I’ve had in mind for a while. Something about manifestation, and gratitude, and going after what you really want. Seems fitting.

Disaster strikes on the last strip when my card stops working. I frantically add my English card to Apple Pay. Then my Canadian card. Then my husband’s card. Nothing works. I even order a Coke at the bar so I can enter my PIN. I am truly desperate at this point. Finally, with some obscure credit card we haven’t touched in a year, it works. A small eleventh-hour miracle, and I’m able to finish the last sequence of letters. I let out a huge sigh of relief.

I head upstairs, collapse into bed, and sleep better than I have in a long time. I’m just so grateful to be here.

We set off on foot to Earl’s Court station from our hotel, dragging what can only be described as a mobile yard sale, only to find severe delays on the tube. I bite the bullet and call a cab to Heathrow (ouch). The flight up to Scotland is short - but even short flights with the boys can feel like long-haul marathons, so we land in Edinburgh a bit frayed around the edges but genuinely excited. I’ve been dying to show my husband and the boys one of my favourite cities on earth.

In the four and a half years we lived in Manchester (before moving back to Canada), Edinburgh was always on the list. But it never quite made it to the top, forever edged out by more far-flung destinations. I’m glad I could finally squeeze in a trip while we’re back in the UK - and even more excited to visit the first photobooth I’ve encountered in Scotland.

The boys are wrecked. So are we. We crash early at our hotel, determined to hit the hills of the Royal Mile after a decent sleep.

Stills Automat, as it’s affectionately called, sits inside the Stills Centre for Photography, up the steep incline of Cockburn Street (which is no joke with a stroller, I can tell you that). It’s a gorgeous Model 21, a bit of a Frankenstein with its open sides and sleek brushed chrome exterior. This booth came hot off the warehouse floor from Photo Illusion in California and is an immaculate piece of machinery.

My first visit is a quick one, in between Vinnie napping and us charging off to do more touristy things. But the lovely team at Stills invite me back after closing to use the booth in peace, away from the steady stream of visitors it’s drawn since it opened late last year.

I sneak in a couple of quick strips with Bert and make plans to return that evening. I’ve also been chatting with Simon Murphy, a Glaswegian photographer working on a fascinating project involving the Photoautomat booths in Berlin, and we’ve timed a meet-up after he finishes work.

That evening, I head back to Stills feeling like a proper VIP, swanning into the building after hours. I’m handed a sacred passcard. David, the booth’s technician and primary caretaker, tells me he’s got a roll that’s nearly finished, so I can go wild. The dream.

I’ve lugged a few backgrounds with me on this trip, determined to realise a couple of ideas I’ve been working on, though time has been tight between museum stops and city strolls. But tonight’s the night. I set up my things while the Stills team quietly wrap up for the day. Simon arrives mid-fluster (I’ve gotten so giddy about the passcard I botch one of the strips I’m working on - a mistake I won’t notice until after I’ve left Scotland). I finish up quickly.

David takes the time to open the booth (it really is pristine) and walks Simon through the mechanics and chemical process: how each exposed strip gets dipped in tanks to create its little segmented gradient of magic. He’s been collecting test strips since the booth arrived in October, and shows me a growing archive, including comparisons with strips processed using regular darkroom developer. For those of you who care about this sort of thing (I know you’re out there): the results are beautiful and bear a much closer resemblance to the Russian paper, though I digress.

Simon is a “strangers strip” collector, and as part of his ongoing project, he takes a strip with everyone he meets - his expression stays the same in all four frames while the other person changes theirs. I oblige, but only with the condition that we do a second one for my own collection. As is tradition.

The camera in this booth still has the bulb responsible for those iconic white borders from colour strips of the past (iykyk). As a treat, David switches it back on so I can use it before we leave. Bliss.

Before I go, I leave a little stash of my photobooth coin pouches with the team (small tokens they can hand out as they like) and thank them profusely, knowing full well I’ll be back in the morning before we head south. Simon and I then duck out for a drink and a deep dive into all things Photoautomat.

We connected through Instagram after I stumbled across his work with the Berlin booths. He’s a bit of an enigma - his love of photobooths begins and ends with Berlin, which my brain struggles to compute. He tells me how the project grew from an earlier project centred around Govanhill and how he’s fascinated by using the tiny square footage of booths to capture entire universes of story and interaction. I get to hear how he discovered photography while working as a postman, and how it’s changed his life in ways he never expected (I can relate). We swap tales of blagging our way into music venues to photograph bands (another life), and chat about the importance of centering joy in your creative practice. I ramble a bit about my own project and what I think it might become, and we end the night with a mutual hope that we’ll cross paths again in Berlin.

As a surprise, Simon gifts me prints (from his upcoming project) of my favourite booth in Berlin, no less. Truly worthy of custom framing.

I’ve left my husband with two small children in a hotel room, and Simon’s come all the way from Glasgow to meet me, so we call it an early night. I’m grateful for this project every day, but especially on days like this when I get to make real human connections over non-alcoholic Guinness in a basement bar in Edinburgh.

Our last day in the city is reserved for vegan haggis, a failed attempt at tracking down my daughter’s clan tartan, and an absurd amount of time at the Camera Obscura and World of Illusions. It’s just as magical as I remembered from a decade ago. And of course, we squeeze in one last visit to the booth, and I buy all of the merch, before packing up to head back to London.

It would be rude not to.

We head upstairs first. Everyone’s hungry, and I’ve had Vinnie strapped to me in the baby carrier since we left Sloane Square, so my back is screaming for a break. We find another excellent food court-style setup, where everyone can order their own thing - my dream scenario. It’s around 3 p.m., and the whole place is nearly empty, so after lunch we head to the booth. There’s a family already inside, busy taking strips (my favourite type of encounter), so we wait patiently for our turn.

Sitting proudly across from a Lululemon on the ground floor is an absolutely stunning Model 11 (only the second I’ve ever used, after one in Paris in 2016 and 2019) Earlier in the day, Rafa told me this booth originally came from a prison in Alaska, where it was used for inmate ID photos (and probably staff, too). I wonder -did anyone ever sneak in for a fun strip? I like to think so.

The booth eventually made its way from Alaska to Anthony at A&A Studios in Chicago, who told me his son’s first strips were taken in it—a sweet personal detail that adds another notch to its already rich history. Fellow photobooth nerds might also recognize this model as the one that Meags Fitzgerald - writer, illustrator, performer, and all-around booth queen - used for her 2012 stop-motion animation short “La Cuna” and other experimental work over the years. So yes, a notable booth by all measures.

Both sides of the curtain are accessible (which means Vinnie can grab at them with glee), but the set-back seat makes it easier for all of us to squeeze in for a family strip. I also took the chance to snap a solo strip with my newly acquired copy of Found Photos, which felt appropriately meta.

One more strip of Vin on his own (why not?) and we’re off - just one more booth today to bring the tally up to eleven, before heading to Edinburgh tomorrow for the second leg of our trip. A little sandwich trip so I can finally show Rick and the boys one of my most favourite cities.

We hop on the Uber Clipper - highly recommend it, by the way, as a low-stress, relatively cheap way to see the river at golden hour - and then take the Underground to our final stop: Waterstones Gower Street.

A bit of family lore here.

When my daughter was born in 2010, I’d just been made redundant. I was living on £120 a week in statutory maternity pay while her dad worked in a bank earning minimum wage (about £4.90 an hour, if memory serves) Things were tight. As soon as I stopped breastfeeding, I took a part-time job at Waterstones near our flat to bring in a bit of extra money on the weekends.

Let me tell you - if someone had plopped a photobooth in that shop back then, it would’ve blown my tiny, exhausted mind. I would’ve spent every spare penny on strips. Or maybe I’d have begged to be a technician (though, truthfully, I had the confidence of a paper boat in a thunderstorm back then, so that might’ve been a stretch).

The job didn’t last. Unsurprisingly, neither did the relationship. But my love of bookstores (and of course, photobooths) persisted. It’s a nice reminder of how far I’ve come in the last almost 15 years.

This particular booth is a beautiful Model 17, with its distinctive red signage and top sign, set off to the side in the store’s small café area. It was busy when we arrived, but the booth itself was free. I didn’t want to take up too much time or space - conscious of monopolizing one of the few café tables in a packed room.

Hassan arrives again. Spending time with him this week has been one of the more unexpected highlights of our time in London - and he wrangles the boys so my husband and I can slip in for a strip together. The café keeps getting busier, the kids are getting hungry, and Hassan, ever the optimist, leads us to a spot for dinner that’s wildly unsuitable for children - but impeccable in taste.

We call it an early night. Tomorrow: Edinburgh.

Tuesday is our last full day before we split up our vacation with a little trip up to Edinburgh—yes, there’s now a booth there, of course.

It’s an early start for me, but I decided to leave the boys at the hotel to have a slower morning while I head east to visit Rafa at Autofoto HQ. We’d been trying to pin down a day that worked for both of us, and considering he also has a full-time career as a professor outside of his work with the booths, I was grateful we could make it work.

I’d seen glimpses of the workspace in my previous life as a voyeur of the photobooth community—lurking on posts during the international Photobooth Convention in 2023 (the last in a long line of them I couldn’t attend)—so it instantly felt familiar. I was impressed by Rafa’s use of space: a partially renovated chrome exterior booth takes up most of the floor, with ceiling-high shelving cleverly disguised behind drapes. There’s a full bookcase of photobooth-related works (a close rival to my own little collection), plus various other storage solutions and hidden nooks making the most of this small but efficient spot.

Rafa, like most of the people I’ve met along this journey, is incredibly welcoming. We spend time talking about his history with the booths, which started with an attempt to get one for a friend’s wedding (which didn’t materialize in time—what a shame). I share my delusions of reviving access to colour paper and chemicals—my theory being that if the technology has existed before, and the products have been manufactured before, then everything else is just semantics. Where there’s a will, there’s a way, right? I think he thinks I’m naive, but I don’t think he realizes that my stubbornness is limitless.

He takes the time to walk me through the stories behind each of the 14 booths he operates in London, as well as the newer ones in Barcelona—including one I hunted for back in 2017 that had apparently been cut in half to remove it from a bar (but that’s a story for another time).

In a city as diverse as London, Rafa has encountered some issues with how different paper stocks are rendering skin tones—particularly since the Slavich paper, with its beautiful range of grey tones, ceased production. Operators have had to get creative, and Rafa is no exception. He talks me through some new tech he’s working on that will hopefully help level the playing field when it comes to representation in the booths. We’re not there yet, but it’s a start—and I’m genuinely excited to see what he develops.

By some cosmic coincidence, he’d even found himself in London, Ontario once—possibly the first person I’ve met in the photobooth world who has.

He’s a busy man—not only with work but also with small children—so I’m conscious not to overstay. But before I leave, he opens what can only be described as a cupboard—barely enough room to stand in—covered floor to ceiling in booth parts. If we’ve been calling storage units “cities” of parts, this is definitely its own little town. We talk about the limitations of space in London compared to the vast warehouses full of booths and parts in North America.

I’d brought a coin pouch to swap, but someone had already beaten me to it—someone from Texas who managed to grab one and deliver it before I had the chance. I say goodbye and make my way back toward the station. I’d originally planned to return to the hotel (we’ve got a busy afternoon ahead), but I take the opportunity—since the kids are entertained—to stop by the second Hoxton Hotel of the trip, this one in Shoreditch.

I wanted to make sure that, if it was as busy as Holborn, I wasn’t dragging the kids along just to wait in line. But when I arrived around lunchtime, it was pretty quiet. A beautiful example of a Model 14, with a peachy-pink curtain and complementary floor tiles. The overall vibe of this booth is just cool.

The booth is empty, but the lobby isn’t—and that’s my least favourite situation: an audience. So I take a couple of quick strips, using some of the paper fan props I picked up in Berlin. One of the few booths in the city with a back curtain (for obvious reasons—see also: Berlin), and the strips come out beautifully. I do my usual routine of balancing them between the fingers of my left hand while they dry, then head outside to catch a cab back to the hotel to pick up the boys. The next stop has been a long time coming and is something I’ve been most excited about for this trip.

Dick Jewell is a British artist known for his eclectic and socially engaged work across photography, film, and publishing. Since the 1970s, he’s explored themes of identity, consumer culture, and the way images circulate in both public and private life. He often works with found photographs—discarded photobooth strips and internet detritus—using them to reflect on how we see ourselves and each other. His practice bridges the analog and digital, combining documentary style with playful but sharp cultural commentary.

And for the better part of a decade, I’ve been on the hunt for a copy of his 1977 book Found Photos. Occasionally, copies pop up on eBay, often in rough shape (which I later learn he was warned about but chose the binding anyway—punk), and usually listed at astronomical prices.

When we started planning our London trip, I sent him a hopeful email to see if he knew of any copies floating around. Very graciously, he offered to sell me one he had in his Pimlico studio. Is this real life? We exchanged a few emails and made plans for a visit—which I imagined would be a quick in-and-out—but it turned into one of my favourite days of this entire photobooth journey.

Across the river from Battersea Power Station (which we’ll get to later), Dick’s studio is a small treasure trove at the top of five flights of stairs (not ideal with the boys, but we survived). Dick even lifted Bert up to show him the trains in the yard from the top of the stairwell, which he loved—add him to the list of new friends Bert has made and adored this week.

Inside, we’re met with stacks and stacks of artworks leaning against every surface. It’s another model of efficient creative chaos, much like Rafa’s space. Dick walks us through some of his recent work—a compendium of interconnected found digital images aptly titled Four Thousand Threads.

He tells us about once casually walking the streets of NYC and stumbling across a discarded Rolodex filled with tobacco license ID cards—complete with photographs of each license holder—which he later framed in a halo of cigarettes. I’m not a spiritual person, but there’s something to be said for the universe leaving gifts for the right people at the right time. And of course, there’s his influence on the photobooth moment in Amélie, after he was interviewed while foraging for discarded strips at Earl’s Court in the late ’90s.

Dick’s wife, Aline, is Brazilian, so we laugh about my attempts to learn Portuguese for the kids and how he never quite did—another reminder of the funny little connections between strangers. I’m sure there’s a more poetic way to connect the dots between Dick’s work and the universal similarities between people, but my words fall short.

Before I go, I tell him about Rafa and the ideas he’s cooking up for the photobooth centennial, and Dick agrees to let me pass along his number. I can’t wait to see how he contributes.

Honestly, I could’ve spent an entire week talking to Dick about his life, his work, and all things photography—but the boys are getting cranky and hungry, so it’s time to say goodbye. Not before thanking him profusely for selling (and signing!) the book for me.

We’ve got two more booths to fit in before the day’s end, so I can bring the total up to 11 before we sandwich in a trip to Edinburgh. We better get a move on.

Sunday starts with a trip to the science museum (mostly for the aviation hall, for my husband), followed by a science-themed afternoon tea at a hotel in Kensington. Everything from digging out edible fossils to mixing your own “chemical” concoctions — plus a bit of dry ice for extra pizazz. The kids loved it, and the weather was glorious, so we took the excuse to forgo the tube and walk most of the way to our first booth of the day: Classic Football Shirts.

Listen, I know I’m prone to saying this a lot, but what a perfect example of a location for a booth. Growing up in Manchester in the ‘90s, and being a massive tomboy, I was absolutely obsessed with football — and Manchester United in particular. If I’d been born a couple of decades later, I would have taken football more seriously, but back then girls weren’t really allowed to play, and you weren’t taken seriously as a fan either. Walking into Classic Football Shirts and getting to browse the selection (and hunt for my 1996 season Umbro/Sharp collared kit that I lost) made for a properly exciting afternoon.

The booth itself is a beautiful Model 17C (alas, no white borders), and the strips from this booth are exceptionally crisp. We took advantage of the fact that Vin was fast asleep in his stroller, and the cafe area of the store was completely empty, to get some (increasingly rare) strips of just me and my husband. Usually, we’re too busy wrangling both kids to manage it unless we all cram in together.

The icing on the cake for this visit was the pretty realistic replica World Cup trophy they have at their checkout — which I sheepishly asked to borrow as a prop (and I’m so glad I did). The kids also got involved with the classic “trophy kiss” pose that any football fan has practised in the mirror with an inanimate object. My only recommendation for them would be to get hold of a Champions League and Premier League replica as well, so I can live out my full seven-year-old self’s dream next time.

I had planned a busy day of booths for Monday, so I decided that one more for Sunday would be enough (and it was sort of en route home), so we headed to The Hoxton in Holborn for our final booth stop of the night.

Tucked away in a far corner of the lobby bar, this Model 17 was previously at the Ace Hotel in London (and before that, the PNW), so it’s iconic in its own way for those of us who are used to seeing them in hotels. When we arrived, a group of three girls were in the booth together. It quickly became apparent that they were waiting the full 4–5 minutes for each strip to come out before taking the next, so I grabbed their attention and let them know they didn’t have to wait the full time (mostly in case they didn’t know!) They largely ignored me (I mean, fair enough, I guess) and continued to use the booth for another 45 minutes. In that time, other people had joined me in line — and subsequently given up on using the booth, which was a shame.

I always try to make a conscious effort to let people use the booth after me as soon as they arrive, keeping a “take turns” system going so that no one person is stood waiting for close to an hour, but I’m not responsible for anyone else’s booth etiquette. What started as a quick stop-off en route home turned into a bit of a chore, with the kids getting tired and cranky. I sneaked a couple of quick strips with Vinnie (who has been the most patient of all of us) before we called it a day and headed back to the hotel.

Monday started with a trip to Euston — I was putting my daughter on a train up to Manchester (by herself for the first time!) to stay with the other side of her family for a week. We’d arranged to meet Marco and Arianna, two of the techs responsible for the vast array of London booths, at the Coal Drops Yard booth — but of course, it would be too much to ask for National Rail services to run on time, so I ended up running late, which is my least favourite thing.

By the time we made it to Coal Drops Yard, I was hot and flustered from speed-walking, but I was greeted by two of the warmest smiles. We talked about their time in Canada (including Marco’s stint working at the CN Tower) and how Arianna had been reluctant to get involved with the booths at first, but then absolutely caught the bug and is now just as obsessed as the rest of us. They were incredibly gracious — both with their information about the booths they service and with helping entertain Bert as he ran around the courtyard.

The booth here is a beautiful Model 17, originally from Montreal, with the mirrored display poster nodding to Nico and The Velvet Underground that’s become synonymous with the London booths. Before visiting, this was definitely the booth I’d seen the most of on social media, so it felt instantly familiar. We took plenty of strips — including some together so we could both keep one (as is tradition) — and then it was on to the next stop for the day. Marco and Arianna cycle between their booth stops; we’re getting the tube, and they’ve very kindly offered for us to join them on their rounds.

Our next stop was one of the busiest booths in the city (so I’m glad we strategically planned it for a Monday): Spitalfields Market. We arrived just before Marco and Arianna pulled up on their bikes — and they even brought me a bagel in case I was hungry (can you believe it!?) — and then got to work in the booth.

I got a chance to have a look inside this beautiful Model 21, which has had an exciting past — from Illinois to Texas to San Francisco, and even a taco restaurant in Wisconsin — before making its way to London. It had belonged to a FotoMat (previously Photo-Me) technician who sold it after being told to scrap it and send it to landfill. It was sold for around $300 (cries in 2025 booth prices), and now costs £7 a strip at this busy location.

By the time we arrived at the market, the sun was in that perfect awkward winter afternoon spot in the sky, shining directly into the camera line of sight. So the first strip of me and Vinnie was a light-leaked mess (I never mind) because we hadn’t pulled the curtain all the way shut. The light leak actually left some pretty fun patterns on the next strip too — a good reminder of how sensitive the booth can be if you’re not careful.

Again, we took a couple of strips together (Marco holds them both behind his back so that fate decides which one I keep) before setting off to the third and final stop of the day. My friend Hassan joined us, which was such a treat (Bert has become incredibly obsessed with him over the last two days), and we all headed towards London Fields.

The Netil House booth is one of only a handful with 24/7 access, so much like the issues Photoautomat has with booths in Berlin, it sometimes suffers a bit of abuse (the techs definitely have stories!). We walked from the tube (extra thankful for Hassan’s extra pair of hands to carry the stroller down an impossibly tall flight of stairs) and made it to the booth a little while after Marco and Arianna.

This booth — previously colour — now has my favourite white borders but also tends to have a slightly brighter-than-usual exposure. We had lots of conversations about the different demographics at each booth and how important it is to make sure that all skin tones get consistent results — which is obviously tricky to do. There’s definitely still a long way to go regarding Black and POC representation in the photobooth community.

Bert took a few strips on his own, and a few with Arianna (who he is now also obsessed with), and Hassan graciously watched Vinnie in the stroller so we could attempt to squeeze all together into a strip — always the best ones.

Honestly, I could have stayed with them all week, following them from booth to booth, but I’m sure they’d have gotten sick of us quite fast! For now, we said our goodbyes, and I’m already mentally planning when I can come and visit them again — what a power couple.

14 booths across one city, traveling with three kids, with a little trip up to Edinburgh in between? Buckle up — this week was a hectic one.

As with all of our European flights, we take the red-eye and land early Friday morning into Heathrow. My husband, who supports these silly little adventures without any complaints, is not the best flyer and can never sleep on planes — so for this trip, I surprised him with a seat upgrade and volunteered as tribute to watch all three kids while he slept up in the lie-flat beds of business class. (Spoiler: he still didn’t sleep, and neither did I.)

We land around 6 AM, and after navigating the tube with a stroller and three large suitcases, we tumble into our hotel lobby — only to be told (unsurprisingly) that our room won’t be ready until much later in the afternoon. So the day is spent trying to stay awake and killing time until we can check in and lie down.

After a few stops at the Natural History Museum and a decent breakfast, we finally collapse into our room, and I start to plan the next few days.

I’m still trying to figure out the lesson the universe has been trying to teach me, because I’ve never been extremely attached to material things, but somewhere between the museum and buying groceries for the hotel kitchen, I managed to lose the vintage diamond tennis bracelet my mum gave me before she died.

She had bought it for herself in Dublin when she first had money to spend on jewelry in her forties, and gave it to me when she was having chemo (despite me trying to convince her to turn up to her appointments wearing as much bling as possible).

Some might argue it was a dumb decision to wear it (and by some people, I mostly mean me), but we were in the UK for my godmother’s black-tie birthday, and I thought it would be a great way to include my mum in the night.

I am devastated. I hope that someone who needed to find it did, and that it helped change their life.

So — not the best start to the trip. We’d only been there about eight hours. I channeled all that hurt and upset and headed out on my own to the first booth while the kids and my husband crashed in the hotel. (I wanted to cry in private.)

In another life, I worked for Céline at Selfridges — which was wonderful, until it wasn’t. Buy me a drink and I’ll tell you about a woman who tried to ruin my life, became the catalyst for my eventual mental breakdown in 2017, and who is the reason I swore I’d never set foot in a Selfridges building again.

But — there’s a photobooth in the cinema on Oxford Street, so I put my big girl pants on, headphones in, and headed to the basement on a Friday night to get some strips.

In fairness (and I hate to give them a compliment), the cinema where the booth is located is actually quite nice. Red velvet everything and low lighting work well with the wood-grain exterior and black “Photobooth” sign of this Model 20. I had tried to time my arrival just before the movie started, so the lobby would be quieter, but there were still plenty of people waiting to use the booth.

Honestly, I enjoyed just watching people, and waited until everyone left for the start of the film. I took some time to play around with a lettering idea I had, but the exposure of the strips was a little too bright and didn’t come out quite how I’d hoped. (This didn’t help the overall frustration and heartbreak of the evening.)

I headed back to the hotel, hoping for a better day tomorrow.

As a new friend said when I told him about the bracelet:

“Things are things. Love is real.“

Saturday morning was a complete surprise — we all felt relatively okay after the jet lag, but we still took a lazier start to the morning, just in case.

There were two booths on the agenda today, starting with arguably one of my favorite placements in the entire world — the Tate Modern.

Free and open to all, an excellent choice for this beautiful Model 14.

The gallery itself was surprisingly quiet for midday on a Saturday, so I managed a speed-visit to the Leigh Bowery exhibition (Bert’s attention span in galleries still needs some work, but I am DETERMINED) before we headed to the booth.

I’m glad I remembered to put the boys in their matching “Future Artist” t-shirts — when in Rome, right?

It’s always a joy to have access to both sides of the booth. So often, you find Model 14s in bars or arcades, pushed up against a wall — which always feels like such a waste. But it did mean that Vinnie had two sides of curtain to grab at during his strips!

I loved this booth.

We were starting to get hungry, so it’s a good thing I’d planned our second booth visit for the day at Mercato Metropolitano — what a happy coincidence. (It’s never a coincidence. I’m a pro.)

I was especially excited because we were meeting one of my oldest friends there — one of the only people, apart from my husband and kids, that I’ve ever taken into a booth.

Our last strip together was in 2017 in Manchester — and both of our lives have changed exponentially since then.

He ended up joining us for most of the days we were in London, which honestly ended up being one of the best parts of the whole trip.

The booth at this food hall is a beautiful Model 17C with a custom vinyl wrap exterior — food hall booths are always great. (See my Berlin entries for some more context.)

I’m a huge fan of booths in all-ages access spaces in general, but especially when all five of us can choose our own things to eat!

The kids took plenty of strips, and I managed a couple with Hassan before we had to leave.

The black-tie event was that night, and I still had to cobble together some sort of outfit and get the boys settled for the evening.

After the second day, the booth tally was up to 3.

Do we think I’m going to manage to hit all of them across the city while we’re here?

Then it’s on to more actually helpful things, like contacting local powder coating companies to get quotes for the transmission rings and camera shelves we’d set aside the day before. Fun fact: you can powder coat things in whatever colour you like - which means there’s a high probability you’ll see some pink parts inside an Auto Photo booth near you soon. Speaking of pink, the pink stir sticks arrive, and they are as perfect as you’d expect.

Bre’s up, so we go and get more gas for the heater (add a larger jerry can to the list of things that need to be ordered) so we can make the most of my last day in the garage. The booth has been left plugged in and heated overnight, so we test her again to compare with yesterday. I think at this point we’ve decided that agitation definitely plays a part, and the strips are looking pretty close to perfect (by Bre’s impeccable standards).

We’ve spent most of the week simultaneously trying to organize the parts and equipment in the garage to make any future refurbishment work as easy as possible, so we take advantage of having two sets of hands to test all of the transmissions Bre has stored here. I’m not going to lie (it’s heavy work) but we have a good system of lifting them onto the testing unit (is that what we’re calling it?), and I can confidently say that by the end of it I’m a pro at detaching and reattaching the motors and belts. Some of the motors are a little dusty (and full of who knows what from years of operation in booths), so we clean them and blast them with compressed air as much as possible while testing.

In total, we test nine transmissions (I think?) and only two aren’t working. With one, we take off the outer casing to try and get a look inside to figure out why there’s vertical motion but no rotation which gave me a chance to see how the gears work and how they’re timed. I’m much more of a visual learner, so this was incredibly helpful. We figured out which gear wasn’t working, but not why, so we add a red tag for easy visual ID and place it back on the DIY transmission stand at the back of the garage.

Lifting heavy transmissions starts to take a bit of a toll, so we go back to taking some more test strips (with props) in the booth - including wrapping the harness “guts” we pulled out of the 17 around us like some sort of all-consuming monster. I’m sure there’s an analogy to be made about the all-consuming nature of an obsession with booths, but I’ll save that for someone more poetic than me.

Bre shows me again (this time in more detail)how to change over the roll of paper, back to Ilford, so the remaining Russian paper can be saved for something more important than me playing around with silly props. We take all of the test strips inside to be scanned so we can see the full range of testing.

Our personal chef is still not home, so we (reluctantly) head out in search of pasta, landing at the Italian Society of Middletown, which, fair warning, will serve you pasta in a dish bigger than your head.

We conservatively estimate it was enough to feed a family of four. I’ve joked before, but if you need food recs for a small area of Connecticut, I’ve got you covered.

By the time we get home, Bryant is back, and I get the opportunity to excitedly tell him everything I’ve been up to this week (I think I just needed to say it all to someone), and we made some plans for the future.

Spoiler alert: this update is months behind real time, but this week would end up securing me a job working alongside Bre as the Operations Manager for Auto Photo. It was unexpected, but very, very exciting, and I can’t wait to see what the future looks like for Auto Photo, and for my own booth journey.

Saturday morning was a real downer. I’ve missed my family like crazy, but I know I could quite easily stay here and learn and work for as long as Bre would let me (yes, I’m already planning when I can come back). Bre finishes scanning my test strips so I can take them home (we’re both fiercely protective of our strips, so she gets it), and since Bryant missed most of the booth testing, we take the opportunity for all of us to take a couple of strips so we each have one to keep - as is tradition.

Bre also lets me take home a spare delivery window for something cool I’m working on. Does this count as being one step closer to my own booth? I’m saying yes.

I hide a little present in my room before I leave, just to try and convey how much this week has meant to me, and set off on the long drive home. I get the opportunity to drop off the tested transmission in Buffalo to Michael (@buffalovebus), and I guess this counts as my first task in the new job? Even though it won’t be official for a couple of months. Michael is as friendly as ever, and lets me take a couple of strips in his booth for my trouble (side note: I’ll always take payment in strips), and gives me a sneak peek at some other things he’s working on. Becoming the keeper of booth secrets once again!

Two hours to home, and unsurprisingly, if you’ve read any of my entries thus far - I cried for most of it.

Wednesday morning, and I am quite literally chomping at the bit to get back into that freezing garage and troubleshoot the chemicals. But first, a few things to do.

I think when we see people online learning a new skill, “chasing dreams,” or just blogging about their experiences, there’s a tendency to skip over the harder parts - the less glamorous bits. Like waking up early to pump because I’m still breastfeeding. I want to use this space to talk openly about the duality of being a parent while also trying to prioritize my own ambitions. And I’ve landed at this: you can’t have it all. People will tell you that you can, and I think we punish ourselves when we don’t measure up to the perfectly curated women online who seem to have it all. But make no mistake - if I’m off doing things for myself, it’s at the expense of time with my kids. Putting them to bed, bath time, hearing about their day. And when I’m at home? Sometimes that means sacrificing opportunities to learn and grow as a person outside of motherhood. I just don’t want anyone reading this to think I’ve mastered the balance, or that I have the best of both worlds, because really, it’s more like half of each.

Anyway. You’re here to read about photobooths, so let’s get back to it.

Picking up where we left off last night: we swapped out the bleach and still had issues. Bre took the time to walk me through fixing a carrier alignment problem by adjusting the screws and using a test strip to line up the paper. Every little tidbit, I try to jot down and remember in as much detail as possible.

We admit (partial) defeat and decide to change the developer. We talk through similar issues that have happened (seemingly good chemicals suddenly producing bad strips) especially at events, and try to troubleshoot what else could be causing it. Maybe agitation? But Bre ordered some acrylic rods to make new stir sticks (they’re pink, I’m excited).

New developer mixed and heated, Bre starts painting the inside of the stripped cabinet for the Model 17, and I get to play in the booth and test, test, test.

They’re getting better. We’ve adjusted the new strobes to find the perfect balance, but there’s still room for improvement. At this point, Bre suggests swapping out the paper for an old roll of Russian Slavich - the gold standard of photobooth paper for years. For those unfamiliar, when Russia invaded Ukraine, Slavich paper exports stopped almost overnight, leading to a global shortage and a scramble for a solution. Bre, along with a few others in the photobooth world, was instrumental in testing and sourcing a new viable paper to keep these booths running and producing high-quality strips. This, of course, is a wildly oversimplified version of the work that went into it - but it’s not really my story to tell, so I’ll leave that to the people who actually did the work.

Bre loads the canister (showing me how to feed the paper down) and tells me I can test it. No pressure, then.

Swapping out the Ilford paper also means I get to add one of my photobooth-parts prop strips to the outside of the canister as a marker for paper output. Maybe 50 years from now, some new tech starting out on their photobooth journey will find a strip of me pretending to drink out of a bottle of developer and think it’s hilarious? I hope so.

The first few test strips come out with a lot of light leaks. Not stressful at all when using paper that’s basically extinct. But the exposure is getting close to perfect. We call it a day (the heater has run out of gas again) and decide to go for pho to warm up from the inside out.

Thursday.

We are determined to get these strips looking 10/10. The booth gets turned on, the construction heater is refilled and running full blast, and we’ve got an element heater in the developer - though that ends up overheating because I wasn’t stirring enough, so I have to throw in some ice cubes. The strips are still coming out a little sepia.

Maybe it is an agitation issue? They’re definitely less sepia after a few test runs but more sepia when the booth sits overnight. We heat the clearing bath just in case the other tanks are too cold and affecting the process, and we start to see some improvement.

We take a break from testing to film a little “vintage fit check” reel for Instagram. Bre has an entire house filled with gorgeous vintage clothes - most of which, she says, she never gets to wear because she’s always working. She’d warned me ahead of time that she wanted to do this and told me to bring an outfit (or borrow one of hers), but I fully chickened out. I’m confident in a lot of ways, but this isn’t one.

We film little snippets of Bre walking up to the booth in a pink dress and red coat (a week out from Valentine’s Day, so it feels fitting), along with a few twirls, poses, and her pulling the strip from the delivery window. For an amateur content creator like me, I’m pretty pleased with how it turns out.

Now feels like the right time to take a few strips together, so we each have some to keep. It’s at this moment I realize I look like a little workshop rat next to Bre’s polished vintage aesthetic -which is prettyfunny. Maybe agitation was the issue, because the strips come out near perfect.

We decide to leave the booth plugged in and heated overnight to see if they revert to sepia again by morning. We’ll see.

Inside the house, we bring in the flashbox from the Model 17 and some camera plates from other booths. Bre takes measurements and scrubs them down to assess powder-coating options, while I remove bulbs and screws to fit new strobes in the flashbox. Right now, their dining room looks more like an extension of the garage.

I take the opportunity to go through Bre’s photobooth strips (at least as many as I can) while she scans pages from my copy of the TRL photobooth book. We’ve now been without our personal chef for two whole days, so we cave and order burgers while watching Project Runway.

I sit there, silently lamenting that tomorrow is my last full day of a week I really, really don’t want to end.

Monday started with a bang. By this point (after two days) I’m feeling a little more relaxed about being in Bre’s home and less of an anxious wreck about them thinking I’m a crazy person. But I digress.

The morning was spent answering emails about placing a booth in an incredible location (hopefully, I can share more about this soon because it really is a special one) before heading to the garage.

Now that we had fully organized and cleared space, it was time to take a proper look at each of the six booths and hopefully make a plan of action. We started by attaching tags to each one with a list of things that needed doing (some tags were more full than others) which helped prioritize the work. I took pictures of the Model 14 wingtop that needed a little TLC and sent them to my husband, Rick (perks of being married to a woodworker) to figure out the best course of action for maintaining the integrity of this vintage piece. Bre is committed to saving and restoring as much of the original details of the booths as possible (but maybe we’ll talk later about the state of the carpet).

We had to start somewhere, so Bre graciously let me pick a booth to work on. Naturally, I chose my forever favorite - the Model 17 with wood grain and black trim. Apart from the Model 20s and 21s I used in malls and train stations, this particular design of the Model 17 is the booth I cut my teeth on, so it felt especially poignant to finally get my hands dirty with it.

Everything came out. Every piece of the inner workings, down to the last screw, until it sat on the floor like some sort of terribly executed organ transplant. I was in heaven. I took the opportunity to photograph Bre’s filthy hands. So few people really understand how much work goes into restoring these machines, and even fewer know how to do it.

We pulled the transmission, tested it (it already had a new home lined up), and I learned all about the motor and pulley system. I emptied the oil (miraculously without spilling) and gave it a good clean before we wrapped it up for transport. Luck would have it that by the end of my week here, I’d be able to drop it off en route, which made me feel especially helpful.

Another day in a freezing garage was taking its toll on our hands, so we called it. Tomorrow, we were going to figure out the construction heater- needs must. Bryant, because clearly the days were going by too fast, fed us when we finished, and we spent the evening talking about more booth ideas and how to prioritize the work. I made jokes about never going home (and I was only half joking).

Tuesday morning, we headed straight to the gas station. We filled up the jerry can and got the construction heater on full blast. It took the edge off the cold, but we still had to get a wriggle on before our hands seized up.

Back into the Model 17 we went. By this point, it was only the last few screws (some of them stripped) and then it was on to the really fun stuff: scraping out years (possibly decades) of chemical sludge and debris from the bottom of the cabinet. Not the most glamorous task I’ve ever done, but probably one of the most rewarding. Bre did the majority of the work while I watched - not from lack of trying, but because she insisted that this was how she first learned, and that was how she was going to teach. I didn’t argue (though I was eager to do as much of the shit work as possible to free her up for bigger things).

Once the inside of the booth was in a condition ready to be painted, we took a break, washed our hands, and got ready for (arguably) the most exciting part of my week so far - plugging in the restored Model 14.

She was plugged in, but we had a long way to go before taking test strips. We started by swapping out the plastic tanks for metal ones to test a new heating system. I learned about all the possible ways to heat the chemicals - the advantages and pitfalls of each option. It was going to take a while for the temperature to reach ideal levels, and the garage was still in the minus temps (I’m so sorry, I’m British, I am a °C person), so while we waited, Bre gave me a full rundown of the inside of the booths, including the main things to check when setting one up after a long time. I took a moment in my head to acknowledge that this was just the tip of the iceberg when it came to learning about these machines, and just how grateful I was for the opportunity.

The temperature finally started creeping closer to ideal, and Bre let me test the booth. Months before I arrived, Lance (who works with Metro Auto Photo in Melbourne) had stayed with her and helped with this booth, including fitting a test button inside the door. I got to test my reflexes, pressing the button and quickly shutting the door before the shutter opened (I imagine I was funny to watch), then holding the door closed with my foot for all four flashes.

The next couple of hours were spent troubleshooting to get the exposures perfect. A combination of extreme cold, chemicals that had been sitting in the booth for too long, and probably cold paper meant that it took quite a few tries. I was in my element. I started using components from the gutted booth as props in my strips while Bre started painting the Model 17.

“Your Silent Face” by New Order came on the speakers, and I had a little cry thinking about my mum (which, to be honest, is a miracle - I lasted three days without crying).

We weren’t making much headway with the strips (though, selfishly, I could sit and do this forever), so we put a pin in it for the night. The heater had run out of gas, so we decided to leave the booth plugged in and see if that made a difference for tomorrow.

By this point, Bryant had abandoned us for his own work responsibilities, so we had to fend for ourselves - we went out for Mexican food, which gave me a great opportunity to hear more about Bre’s background, how she found her first booth in a thrift store (and maybe about plans for world domination). The tacos were excellent.

By the end of this week, I will have racked up at least five solid local food recommendations for Cromwell, Connecticut - which feels like a very specific string in my bow.

I don’t know why I’ve been putting off starting this “journal” entry, maybe it’s got something to do with being able to hold on to that whole week and it not being officially over until I write about it? This is definitely going to be in multiple parts, with a lot of feelings to unpack and a lot to talk about, but let’s start at the beginning - arriving at Bre’s house before she’d landed at the airport and sitting in her living room with Genie and Watuzi (my new best friends, don’t tell our dog Charlie) and absolutely drenched in anxiety. I’d tried to kill some time en route, knowing that I would beat them home, by stopping at Whole Foods and hurriedly buying some nice olive oil and dried lavender - never to turn up empty handed, before biting the bullet and heading to their house before the weather gets any worse.

What am I doing in someone’s house, without them here. Why am I here, why did I suggest this, why did I think this was a good idea. I must be crazy, THEY must be crazy, what if they think I’m crazy? What if I’m terrible at all of this and it ruins my life and my ambitions, what if they ask me to leave? Apparently I’ve still got a long way to go in the self love and confidence department (I’d called my husband a couple of times at this point for a pep talk) Their house is everything I want to be when I grow up. Shelves and shelves of vintage cameras and tchotchkes- not forgetting two perfectly placed original photobooth top signs. A house full of warmth and personality.

They arrive, all anxiety melts away (sort of), with a handshake from Bryant (I panicked) and a huge hug from Bre. I’m tired after almost 10 hours in the car, but the first night ended up in us all staying up until 2am talking about booths. We talk about how Bre found her first ever one in a thrift store (it takes me a while to realise it wasn’t for sale AT the thrift store, that would have been insane) and how she has spent the last decade buying up booths where she can and restoring them herself. At this point I’m exhausted so I call it a night ready for the week ahead.

Saturday is a slow start (see 2am bedtime) but we spend the late morning talking about the week ahead, and the month ahead, and the years ahead as for as Bre’s plans for booths are concerned. My main focus for this week is to be as helpful as possible and for her to use my time (and hopefully my talents?) as she sees fit. Bryant, who is just as involved in these planning for the future conversations, will become our personal chef over the next few days as it quickly becomes obvious that forgetting to eat is normal when there’s so much to do.

By the afternoon I’m ready to see “the garage” - where do I even start. 6 booths, ranging in age, all lined up to the left side of the space, with the rest of the garage filled quite literally to the brim with boxes and totes full of spare parts and supplies. Is this real life? Optimistically, maybe this is a look into my future 10 years from now? A girl can dream.

It becomes apparent that we’re not going to be able to start any real work on the booths until we have some more space to work with so between the three of us, we make a start at rearranging some of the bigger parts into “cities” , a term affectionately coined by Bryant that became a really helpful method over the next few days. Spider city, arguably my favourite of the municipalities, dominated a whole shelf, and by the time we had married up some of the totes and cleared some of the garbage and packing supplies we started to be able to see the floor (this was a big achievement). At this point I’ve forgotten to mention that along with the 6 booths in the main garage there is also a storage pod outside with 5 digital shells (to be converted to analogue, because digital is dead) and a double horse trailer to make moving booths easier.

Now that we have some space, we can move the booths apart so we can see them and work on them easier, and at this point we call it a day. It’s still -4° in Connecticut and our fingers are feeling the cold (we have yet to figure out the industrial construction site heater but that’s for another day) so we retreat into the house, order pizza and talk more about the booths, of course. I go to bed just completely giddy that I’m here and this is what I’m doing, and what a life to be able to learn new things and embark on new adventures at 35 with three kids? Wild.

Sunday is a day of rest, physical at least, as we make more of a plan for how I can help new over the next few months. A lot of what we talked about and organised can’t be shared -yet- but it becomes obvious very quickly that this week is going to change my life.

We take the slower paced day as an opportunity to go through Bre’s collection of photobooth books - some I own, some I don’t, and to flick through her impressive strip collection. I’ve brought my copy of the MTV TRL photobooth book so she can scan a few pages for reference.

We also had a go at trying to add to the list of remaining booths left in the world, an extension of a list started at the 2023 International Photobooth Convention, and to my surprise I was able to add a couple of lesser known booths - I’ll share those after I get to visit them myself.

Another relatively late night spent talking about my dreams of running my own booth, ambitions of resurrecting colour, the demise of Slavich paper and all things analogue and it was time for bed. Monday is set to be exciting.

I’m headed to Connecticut for what I think might be one of the most life-changing weeks of my life so far, but I’m getting ahead of myself. First, there’s a stop along the way.

I make it toward Niagara Falls in record time. There are a few weather warnings, and we’ve had a few days of snow, so even by normal early morning standards, the roads are pretty clear and the border is almost deserted. A breathtaking view of the falls as I cross - (dear reader, I couldn’t see a thing through the freezing fog) and one of the quickest crossings I’ve ever had, and I brace myself for a four-hour stretch through upstate New York in the snow.

After a few long journeys through this neck of the woods, things are starting to look familiar, and I tend to aim for the same stop-off points - gas stations, grocery stores - which makes the drive easier to manage. (That, and endless hours of true crime and infectious disease podcasts - don’t judge.)

The stop I’d planned was a booth I’d had on my radar for quite a while, lovingly run by Ryan at Thorne’s Marketplace in Northampton, Massachusetts. The only times I’ve been to Massachusetts were fleeting visits - once with my family on a road trip to Boston and Salem for two days, and another, very surreal time when I had an exhibition of my textile work in a gallery in Cambridge - another life.

This time is no different. With only a couple of hours to spare, I’m determined to fit it into my travel schedule.

I arrive in Northampton just before dark. After a short struggle with parking (and nearly bailing on the icy sidewalk), I make it inside in search of the booth. I get instant nostalgic vibes as I walk through the marketplace - (a less goth version of Affleck’s Palace for any of my Mancunian readers, Kensington Market for those in Toronto) and make a mental note of the stores I want to check out afterward.

I arrive at the booth and find a mother and son just about to go in. He can’t be more than six or seven. They use the booth, and she patiently explains how it “develops the picture inside the machine like a darkroom” and that he has to wait a few minutes before it comes out. He is so excited when it finally does, though he complains that it’s wet, and off they go. I love witnessing these little slices of memory-making when I watch other people using the booths.

I wait until they’ve left before I hop in. The booth looks to me like it could be a Model 14 cabinet, with the familiar woodgrain laminate outer panels and cream-colored Formica on the inside, but - readers we’ve stumbled across a bit of a mystery.

The serial plate lists the booth as a “Simon Phonographic Inc” Model 25.

One of two things could be true: Simon Phonographic Inc. could have modified and rebranded the booth under their own numbering system after purchasing it from AutoPhoto/Photo-Me, or they could have used that numbering system for inventory and repairs. Alternatively, although we’re so used to talking about the main photobooth manufacturers, there may have been a smaller company that bought parts and assembled booths in different configurations. The booth has been at Thorne’s for over 30 years before Ryan took ownership, so we might not find out the full story. But for the sake of this project, I’m going by the cabinet - and labeling her a Model 14.

The other unusual feature is a (not original) full-length black curtain. I can only imagine the action this booth has seen in its nearly 35-year residency…

I take a couple of strips to test the backgrounds. (I’ve also learned my lesson from Berlin about being patient with the first strip.) As I wait for them to develop, I get to witness what might be my favorite booth interaction yet.

Five girls, no older than 12 (with their moms standing to one side), all want to use the booth. After some deliberation, they decide to squeeze in all at once.

What follows - (which I stealthily record the audio of) is pure, unadulterated joy. Squealing and giggling between each of the four flashes (I’m almost certain they weren’t ready for the first one) and absolute beaming faces as they tumble out of the booth.

Mine comes out shortly after, so I explain to them that theirs will take a few minutes. When it finally does, there’s an absolute frenzy of passing it around, giddily showing the strip to their moms, who immediately decide amongst themselves that they’re going to scan it in to make copies.

I jump in for a few more strips. I’ve brought dollar-store heart-shaped glasses to try for a little Valentine’s Day-themed strip, in case I don’t make it to another booth before then. I finish up just as Ryan arrives to say hello.

His warmth and friendliness precede him, and we get a chance to talk about how he ended up taking over the booth and his plans for a second (and maybe third?) location. I think the nearly seven hours in the car had gone to my head a little because I go on quite a rant about the logistics (and maybe some of my plan) to revive the capacity for color back in the booth -but that’s a much longer story for another time.

I ask Ryan to take a strip with me, as is tradition, and say goodbye but not before leaving one of my little photobooth money coin pouches behind for someone to find - a little tradition I started after another quick visit to Chicago in December.

I stop briefly to take a picture of my strips on the beautiful tiled floor down the hallway before heading off toward my final stop, only an hour to go!