In the Photobooth
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Photobooth
A single person goes into this very private place in the middle of a very public place and can be whoever they want to be from the waist up (unless they are very creative) for 4 pictures, 4 flashes of the camera. You must reveal your innermost soul while you’re in there, because there is not really much room for anything else. A thin black curtain that doesn’t even go all the way down to the floor that separates you from the public. You think hard for your 4 poses then you put your quarters in the slot and you become someone else for 4 flashes or maybe you become who you really are. Then you rejoin the outside world and wait for your pictures to process and drop into the slot in plain public view. This was a ritual, an obsession, when I was a 20-year old college student. The idea was to take this simple basic process and see how you could warp it -- push it to the limit. It was like having your own private photographer. It was a fantasy, it was intriguing, it was addictive. I think it only cost a quarter back then, maybe 50 cents. 4 black and white pictures in a vertical row. Very good quality, clear pictures and I’ve been obsessed with them ever since. I’ve painted them on silk, etched them, silk-screened them, enameled them, painted them, traced them, computerized them, shrinky-dinked them, made them into a book, sewn them, colored them, plastered them, and now I’ve cut them out of metal and made them into a box with 10 shrinky-dinked tablets that tell this story. A box that contains my soul, my essence, an icon, like an oracle waiting for someone to ask the right question. |
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