The Gen-Z Revival Of Vintage Photo Booths

At the moment, one of the biggest event trends is the photo booth. It is very difficult to find a trade show without a corporate photo booth hire, a wedding without a magic mirror booth and a variety of interesting themed booths that make taking social media snaps exceptionally easy.

However, alongside this trend, as well as unique technologies such as 3D booths and the ever-popular world of Purikura in Japan, classic, traditional photo booths are also seeing a revival as well in their own right, driven by a somewhat unlikely source.

The traditional photo booth was initially showcased in 1889, started to gain popularity in 1925 and for the rest of the century would be an exceptionally popular way not only to produce identification images but also for young people to capture a spontaneous moment in time.

These booths were nearly ubiquitous up until the late 1990s when higher quality affordable point-and-shoot digital cameras started to become available and reached a nadir by the 2010s when smartphones had replaced both photo booths and digital cameras as a way to capture the spirit of a moment.

However, for Gen-Z, a generation of teenagers and young adults born into a social media world, the limitations of mechanical film in general and vintage photo booths, in particular, have gone from being blemishes to be removed digitally to an aesthetic choice in its own right.

Imperfection in photography in general has become a striking trend on social media, with deliberately overexposed, blurry photography presenting a hazy result, something that can be effectively exploited with mechanical photo booths and to a lesser degree Polaroid instant cameras.

Without the option and therefore the temptation to adjust an image with filters, every picture captures the natural beauty of its subject according to influencer Zach Jelks. Mr Jelks loved the effect of photo booth pictures so much that he bought a £40,000 Photomatica machine for his apartment.