the fotoautomat

a quick note, new prints & a promo code ❦

In my twenties, I started collecting old photographs of strangers. I loved to dig through antique store crates looking for the portraits and snapshots whose discarded stories needed attention and remembrance, even if a single suggestive frame was all they had left to say. I especially coveted those from the old analog automats—the kind that take a photo one explosive flash at a time and then, behind the lens, dunk their resin coated paper strips into tanks of developer and fixative, eventually spitting out the most high contrast, curiously detailed, and honest seconds of the moment just passed. Now, a decade and more later, the photobooth captures some of my favorite images of myself. The ones I most want to last, and those I want to be conjured when recalling so many different periods of my own life. It’s partly the way that the automat so purely captures us that marks its distinctiveness, and partly the fact that I’ve often wandered into them in my most fragile, uncertain, and exciting moments, wanting to be captured. Sooner than I realize, the timelessness of the photostrip makes me nostalgic and reaching for every version of myself that has sat behind those heavy curtains, sometimes even while the memory is still glossy and wet in the palm of my hand.

In my infatuation with nostalgia and my love for the photobooth, I wanted to create prints that could magnify and memorialize the timeless, romantic, and fleeting nature of this type of image. The Fotoautomat Prints are handprinted and toned with both traditional and alternative methods. They are available as 5x7” and 11x14” one-of-a-kind recreations of your most exquisite and spontaneous moments from inside these epic relics. (Honestly, if I could add any camera in the world to my collection, it would be a Fotoautomat.) Orders for these custom prints are open now. Instructions on sending in your photos are detailed on my website. Please use the code AUTOMATICA for 20% off your order. This code will work on anything in my shop. Thank you for reading. ❦

✹ shannon saint brigid { order here } ✹

xoxoxo,

Shannon