Fotoautomatica

Mango blazer
Zara tank (similar)
Mavi jeans (c/o)
Jonak mules (similar)
Gucci handbag
Zara sunglasses (similar)
Wolf Circus necklace (similar)
Urban Outfitters earrings (similar)
Location: Fotoautomatica, via Santa Monaca – Florence, Italy

I’ve never seen a photo booth I wasn’t tempted to step inside. When I was a teenager, two vintage specimens still remained at the local shopping mall, straight out of the seventies – one offered photos in black and white, the other in colour. My friends and I tried both, often. And with enthusiasm. We never got more than one good shot out of four. But we always went back to try our luck again.

These days, North American photo booths are mostly kitschy corner studio set-ups at weddings. Once in a while, a vintage one shows up in a department store for an event, spruced up for the occasion – but it always disappears again shortly after. In Paris, photo booths are still everywhere – the ubiquitous Photomaton can be found in metro stations all over the city. Sadly, these days the Photomaton is a decidedly modern and utterly charmless contraption meant primarily for taking the tiny photos that the French bureaucracy seems to require as an attachment to every piece of paper ever completed by a citizen or resident. I used one when I needed photos for my metro card. The experience was dull.

I had never seen a photo booth in Italy – or anywhere else, really – until we got to Florence.

We stayed on the south side of the Arno. The neighbourhood is quieter there, the population made up of more locals than tourists. We were across the street from a bakery that opened in the fifties, and within walking distance of two grocery stores. There were trendy restaurants too, of course – Santo Spirito is home to S. Forno and its equally chic siblings, Il Santo Bevitore and Il Santino. But the new blended in with the old almost effortlessly. Just steps away from S. Forno, built into the corner of a building sometime in the seventies, was the Fotoautomatica.

This Fotoautomatica is not the only one of its kind – we spotted another Fotoautomatica near Santa Maria Novella Station. I loved them both, but there was something especially charming about this one. Probably just that it was a fixture of our neighbourhood, at corner we crossed every day and yet, such a curiosity at the same time. Who thought to set it into the building, I wondered – did it not occur to them that photography might change in the years to come, leaving them with a useless closet outside their door? As it stands, I can’t imagine the Fotoautomatica will ever be taken out, so permanent is its construction. It will remain on via Santa Monaca while the world around it changes and moves on.

My love of all things vintage is back this season, so I fell hard for this little photo booth. While totally impractical, it certainly had a lot of charm. (And at only two euros for photos, is still more affordable than Winnipeg photo booths ever were!)

The Fotoautomatica ignited my curiosity about photo booths of the world. Are there any old ones still standing where you live?