AUTOPHOTO: New York Museum of Vintage Photo Booths Opens October 11

A new museum dedicated to vintage photo booths, AUTOPHOTO, will open on October 11 at 121 Orchard Street in New York's Lower East Side, just blocks from the New Museum's expansion. Founded by Breanna Conely Saxon, who has restored and relocated photo booths since 2009, the hybrid space will feature a rotating exhibition of six functioning vintage booths, an archive, and an artist studio. Visitors can take black-and-white photo strips for $8, as well as color and three-image formats. The museum will also display vintage photo strips and contemporary artworks reflecting on memory and the cultural value of the format. A Sure Thing Chapel, opening later in autumn, will offer Las Vegas-style quick weddings where couples can kiss inside a vintage booth. Inaugural exhibitions include a historical journey back to the 1920s, when Anatol Josepho invented the first booths—his heirs have lent never-before-exhibited artifacts. Other opening shows feature self-portraits of notable personalities, a stop-motion film by Rachel Rowe, and the Photobooth Technicians Project: a unique book chronicling the stories of 49 technicians who maintain booths worldwide, now part of the museum's permanent collection. Saxon aims to preserve what she calls 'an endangered art form,' noting fewer than 200 functioning vintage photo booths remain globally.