ART AND THE PHOTOBOOTH

Carl Johan De Geer

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De Geer, a Swedish artist born in Canada in 1938, created a photobooth out of a wooden beer crate, according to a description of an exhibition at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm that showcased the resulting photographs in 2006.

Inside was a miniature landscape with tiny plastic figures. A camera (an Olympus Pen, half-format) was hidden in the midst of the landscape, and those who adhered to the instruction to "Please press the button" were photographed. The booth was exhibited and the artist visited the gallery every day to change the film in the camera. The result was a couple of thousand negatives, divided into three sets. The first trial took place in the autumn of 1967 in the De Geer family's diminutive flat at Smedslättstorget in Bromma, where thespians and other bohemians performed antics in front of the photo booth. The personal interior style and his own textiles can be discerned in the background. The next step was to install the photo booth at Galleri Karlsson on Vidargatan in Stockholm between 17 February and 17 March, 1968.

Contributed by Brian