Smile please! That'll be just £5
The Photoautomat
TUCKED INSIDE Street Level Photoworks, the Glasgow based gallery in the Merchant City, sits a small golden box: the Photoautomat. Transported from Berlin to Glasgow by the photographer Simon Murphy, this vintage, coin-operated photobooth is a stark contrast to how we’re used to taking photos today. There are no screens, no previews or endless retakes, just £5, five minutes and four photos.
A relic from our pre-digital past, the traditional analogue photobooth was once a familiar sight in cities across the world. Tucked into the corners of everyday life, these little booths offered users the chance to pull the curtain, take a seat on the machine’s wobbly throne and immortalise a moment long before our phones could do it in seconds. But as the digital revolution took over, the photobooth, for many of us, became little more than a place to get our passport photo.
Yet, nearing a century since the first photobooth was born, the machine seems to be making its comeback. Starting in Berlin, Simon Murphy began photographing the restored analogue booths dotted across the city. The slow, unpredictable process and the experience it created became the focus of his work.
For tourists and Berliners, these booths offered more than a snapshot in time, and a memento to bring back home. As Murphy described in his own campaign, the excitement and laughter that greets a delivered strip is “rarely experienced” when photos only live on our screen and in an endless scroll. Now in collaboration with Photoautomat Berlin, Murphy has brought one of these machines to Glasgow, giving a new audience a chance to experience it for themselves.
The arrival of this Tardis-like box has quickly caught the city’s attention, with Gen Z emerging as some of its most enthusiastic users. Across social media, the Photoautomat prints have become the latest profile picture and Instagram story, as users pose, share their strips and encourage others to do the same.
It comes as no surprise as the Photoautomat sits within a larger resurgence of analogue experiences among Gen Z. For a generation of digital natives, the appetite for slower, more tangible experiences has seen things like disposable cameras, digital point-and-shoots, and film photography all make their comeback.
But why? Why, when a 4K camera sits in our backpockets are we deliberately seeking out a 100-year photobooth? Perhaps the answer lies in what analogue photography offers that digital doesn’t. At a time when hyper-polished, carefully curated images and the pursuit of the ‘perfect’ shot for Instagram have become the norm, there is something appealing about a grainy, black-and-white strip of four photos that you can’t perfect.
“Going analogue” makes room for the imperfections and awkward moments that make an image feel all the more real. In a world of algorithms, mass content, digital footprints and AI-generated content, seeking out something tangible and more authentic can feel like a remedy to the pressures of digital life.
As we plot our escape from the screen, perhaps the Photoautomat is our getaway car?
OCEAN WILLIAMS AKOTO
The Photoautomat is on display at Street Level Photoworks, Trongate 103 until August 21, 2027.
