“As long as it’s for art, it can be in Glasgow”: From Berlin to Glasgow, Simon Murphy brings Photoautomat to Trongate.
Award-winning photographer and lecturer Simon Murphy’s newest project is now open to the public in Trongate 103: Glasgow’s very own Photoautomat. An analogue photobooth over 100 years old, the booth has been available to use this week, although Simon explains that “it’s still in its testing phase”. During both of my visits, he was in attendance checking the booth’s internal workings and polishing fingerprints off its exterior.
While maintaining the booth, Simon chats with users, explaining the story behind its three-year journey to Glasgow and what he hopes will come of it. We discussed the success of his previous exhibition ‘Govanhill’ that consisted predominantly of black and white portraits of residents. The exhibition was held in Street Level Photoworks, who are the collaborators of the Photoautomat journey, allowing its residency in Trongate 103. Simon explained, “It took seven years to do the Govanhill exhibition. Govanhill is a square mile, and there are 88 languages spoken within that area. That project was personal to me because I lived in Govanhill and grew up there. But the whole idea of boundaries I really liked; everything took place within that square mile.”
The connection between an area as small as Govanhill and photobooths in Berlin might seem disconnected at first, but Simon explains the personal importance behind both projects. “The reason that I picked Berlin and these photobooths was that I had been travelling to Berlin since 2011, taking students there. I saw the booths and thought it was unusual that they were outside; they still had all the old vintage process, which I love as a photographer. I would just get a strip as a memento.”
However, the machinery behind these mementoes is what inspired Simon’s new project. “Photography changed my life,” he says. “The camera was a reason to go places, to be places. It felt like having the camera, people just accepted me being there. That grew into being able to speak to people and do portraits and things like that.”
For his project after ‘Govanhill’, Simon decided to photograph cameras, specifically, the analogue booths in Berlin (of which there are approximately 34 in total). On the new subject of his photography, he says, “I like limitations; I think limitations force you to be creative. Everything in reference to the art produced must happen in these photobooths.”
When photographing the booths in Berlin, Simon asked strangers to take photos with him in the booth. He practised a “straight face” every time, offering the stranger to do whatever they liked. He told me, “all sorts of things happened. A guy bit me in the ear once.” Playfully, I have been reassured.
The photobooths were discovered abandoned in Switzerland by “Berlin Boys” Asger Doenst and Ole Kretschmann, who resurrected them in 2004. Saving them from destruction after being bought over by a digital company. Not to use the booths themselves, but to occupy their spots with a digitalised version.
Now, these analogue booths have been maintained for over two decades. Simon was allowed to bring one to Glasgow by Doenst and Kretschmann under the condition it would be used for Art. The goal for the project is to create an archive of the film strips produced, eventually for a book.
“If people are interested in being part of this archive, how do we do that?” he says. It’s an art project unfolding publicly in real time, with the people of Glasgow at the centre. “This project is about connections, my connections with Berlin, Glasgow now connected with Berlin and people’s connection to each other. But it isn’t about this ‘being connected’ to digital media,” he tells me. “I say to people ‘when they step into that booth, they’re in Berlin’ and what happens in Berlin stays in Berlin. There are intimate moments happening in there [the photobooth] between people that will not be shared on social media. And that is special.”
Image Credit: Adam Holmes
