Devon artist celebrates 100 years of photo booths

An artist with a “lifelong, nerdy obsession” with photobooths is celebrating the 100 year anniversary of their existence.

Kate Tyler, who lives in Modbury, Devon, uses analogue photo booths to create her artwork.

She said she prefers them to digital booths because “there’s something really lovely about the quality of those pictures” and getting a “long strip of four pictures”.

She has also been able to “document all the way through my life” with photos of herself and her friends she started gathering from the age of 12.

“It’s not just me, there’s a few other people who also have a love of photo booths,” she said.

Earlier this year Ms Tyler set up a booth in Ashburton and 500 people came forward to have their photo taken.

Her passion also led her to take a trip to Riga in Latvia, so she could have her photo taken in the booth in the city’s bus station.

Ms Tyler said her interest started as a teenager when she “had a lot of fun with friends in the booths.”

“I guess when my friends were sensible and got bored of doing of doing that, I didn’t and I just carried on,” she said.

It has become harder for her as old-style booths have commonly been replaced by digital ones.

“It’s much harder now living in Devon because there aren’t any analogue photo booths in Devon so I have to travel to London or Manchester – there’s only a handful left in the UK.”

The photo booth was invented in 1925 by Anatol Josepho and was based in New York, Ms Tyler said.

“That was at a time when photography was really out of reach for most people… so this made it very accessible.”

It was also a time when not everybody would have been able to have photos taken in a studio due to prejudices.

She said: “I’m thinking of people of colour, I’m thinking of the LGBT community, they wouldn’t have been welcome, whereas you pull that little curtain and, you know, anybody can be in there and take their pictures.”

Ms Tyler said she would be appearing on the One Show in January to discuss the anniversary.