Part A+C Photobooth Raynal Pellicer

The art of the Automatic portrait!
I briefly came across this book by Raynal Rellicer in a bookshop and it was one of those must buys .Everything from it being a hard back , its content of cores and its folding pages appealed to me straight away . There is something so nostalgic about photo booths and a hole book dedicated to there history ,developments and artists that use a photo booth as a medium is just amazing. It talks about the origins of automatic photography from the first phenomenon of Eight photos in eight minutes for 25 cents which shows how much instant photography has developed . Before the first photo booth the "Photomaton" was created Photographs would be sent off to develop so this was a huge step in photography and iv found it incredible interesting to read about . In a round about way you could compare the appeal of the photo booth to the appeal of the "selfie" but modern day with developed technology. There are many things that appeal to people about photo booth photography but mainly to me I find the concept of a fixed situation interesting. The fixed lens , fixed lighting and fixed back drop to me intensified facial features and emotion I also think this is why other people treasure photo booth images of themselves. The photo booth has not only influenced photographers but also artists using a list of different mediums such as collage an paint. Francis Bacon ,a massively famous painter was inspired by a series of photo booth self portraits he has constructed . Here are the original photgraphs that are show in the book and the artists interpretation through the medium of paint . In the late sixties is when Bacon did a number of self portraits and also conducted an interview releasing that he prefers to paint for photographs than models. He said about the photobooth images " they inhabit me, they inhabit me because ,if I like them, I dont want to practice before them the injury that I do to them in my work. " could this be related to Susan Sontags on photography and the way she argues that taking a picture is leaving your model venerable as you are taking apart of them you will never see and they have no control over ? A number of Photo booth strips , of himself (Fancis) were found in his studio after death .