Melbourne exhibition unearths decades of lost photobooth portraits

Running at RMIT Gallery until August 16, Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits is a new exhibition honouring Melbourne’s long-standing relationship with the analogue photobooth.

The exhibition is conveyed through the life and legacy of Alan Adler, who spent more than 50 years maintaining the city’s booths.

Regarded as the world’s longest serving photobooth technician, Alan’s weekly rounds saw him become an unlikely custodian of generations of fleeting moments: first kisses, solo snaps, friends crammed into tiny frames.

His work made him a silent witness to the city’s personal histories.

Now, in a world-first project, Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits unveils a remarkable archive of hundreds of photostrips that were lost or abandoned inside booths between the 1970s and today.

Found tucked behind machinery, swept from the floor or simply left behind, these candid portraits – some joyful, some solemn – will be exhibited publicly for the first time in a bold attempt to reconnect them with their original owners.

Curated by Catlin Langford and Metro Auto Photo, and presented by the Centre for Contemporary Photography in partnership with RMIT Culture, the exhibition offers a distinctly Australian perspective on nostalgia, memory and identity.

“It’s a real-life Amélie moment,” the curators explain, encouraging visitors to help reunite the photostrips with their rightful faces.

Among the exhibition’s most poignant features is Alan’s own self-portrait archive – thousands of photostrips taken week after week over five decades, each captured while he was on the job.

Alongside Alan’s archive, the show features historical ephemera, behind-the-scenes insights into how photobooths work, short films, and works from a range of artists including Katherine Griffiths, Mark Holsworth, Kyle Archie Knight, Ruth O’Leary, Nicky Makin, Brian Meacham, Patrick Pound and Joshua Smith.

For visitors wanting a hands-on experience, a restored black-and-white 1960s photobooth will be operating inside the gallery, inviting the public to create their own analogue memory in real time.

Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits is on at RMIT Gallery, 344 Swanston St, from June 5 to August 16. Entry is free. •