Photobooth, the world’s only tintype and Polaroid portrait studio, invited the community to help celebrate its one-year anniversary Friday night. A balloon reading “Congrats!” bobbed above the large crowd as DJ Jeff Bostic spun tunes and photographer and co-owner Michael Shindler shot one-of-a-kind 8×10 tintype portraits.
In a speech from the stairs that overlook the studio and its display of some of the approximately 4,000 tintypes created by Photobooth over the past year, co-owner Vince Donovan thanked partygoers for embracing the business and making it their home.
“One thing I didn’t expect was that so many people would take this place personally,” he said. “It’s something that’s just really moving to me…so thank you.”
Shindler said that he, too, has been surprised by the enthusiasm expressed for Photobooth, not just by “photo-geeks” but a broad group of people. He suspects it has something to do with digital photography replacing traditional photography, and a longing for tangible memories.
“Photography doesn’t really exist in the physical world anymore,” he said. “Photographs were once prints, they were objects. And now they are created, observed and passed into the sea of storage.”
There’s something about a tangible object, he said. A book, to him, isn’t just about the story inside. “It [the actual book] has meaning for me,” he said. “I remember where I was when I read it.
“Those things are about you, and they’re important. And those are things we’ve traded for digital.”
The tintype process is one that subjects must submit to; there’s no place for either posing or spontaneity. “People just come in, and they are what they are,” Shindler said.
The results are raw, honest, captivating portraits. Often they are also subtle and weird.
“For some reason, [the subjects] just look different, and they can’t put their finger on it,” Shindler said.
Because there is no negative involved, tintype portraits cannot be reproduced. “With this, there’s only one,” Shindler said. “So they have this value as objects that make them kind of precious.”
Here are the reactions of a few of the night’s subjects to their tintype portraits:
Danica: “What I think of my portrait…well, I never like pictures of myself and these portraits are particularly honest, but I find them fascinating, regardless.”
Lance Winters: “I think that the composition and the technical aspect are great, but the subject sucks. I love what he does.”
Anna Marie Panlilio: “I didn’t really know what to expect, so I had to look a little bit closer, but I like it.”
Peter Verdone: “It’s like jumping back 150 years in time, and being there, and having your picture taken. It forces you to reflect on the fact that people 200 years ago weren’t any different from the people now.”
