Old school exposure: Vintage photo booth has lasting allure at Thornes Marketplace, but maintaining it is a chore

Ryan Stratton, owner of the vintage photo booth in Thornes Marketplace, checks a test after  changing the chemicals and done general maintenance to the popular machine earlier this month.

Ryan Stratton, owner of the vintage photo booth in Thornes Marketplace, checks a test after changing the chemicals and done general maintenance to the popular machine earlier this month. STAFF PHOTO/CAROL LOLLIS

Ryan Stratton, owner of the vintage photo booth in Thornes Marketplace, cleans, changes the chemicals and does general maintenance to the popular machine earlier this month. Stratton says it can be a challenge maintaining the booth, one of only about 150 left in the United States, given that the company that made it no longer exists. Instead, he relies on an informal network of fellow analog photo booth owners across America to help.

Ryan Stratton, owner of the vintage photo booth in Thornes Marketplace, cleans, changes the chemicals and does general maintenance to the popular machine earlier this month. Stratton says it can be a challenge maintaining the booth, one of only about 150 left in the United States, given that the company that made it no longer exists. Instead, he relies on an informal network of fellow analog photo booth owners across America to help. STAFF PHOTO/CAROL LOLLIS

Ryan Stratton, owner of the vintage photo booth in Thornes Marketplace, cleans, changes the chemicals and does general maintenance to the popular machine earlier this month.

Ryan Stratton, owner of the vintage photo booth in Thornes Marketplace, cleans, changes the chemicals and does general maintenance to the popular machine earlier this month. STAFF PHOTO/CAROL LOLLIS

Ryan Stratton, owner of the vintage photo booth in Thornes Marketplace, cleans, changes the chemicals and does general maintenance to the popular machine  earlier this month.

Ryan Stratton, owner of the vintage photo booth in Thornes Marketplace, cleans, changes the chemicals and does general maintenance to the popular machine earlier this month. STAFF PHOTO/CAROL LOLLIS

Cait MacMullin and Mark Norris get their photos taken in the photo booth on the second floor of Thornes Marketplace.

Cait MacMullin and Mark Norris get their photos taken in the photo booth on the second floor of Thornes Marketplace. STAFF PHOTO/CAROL LOLLIS

Cait MacMullin and Mark Norris get their photos taken in the photo booth on the second floor of Thornes Marketplace on Monday.

Cait MacMullin and Mark Norris get their photos taken in the photo booth on the second floor of Thornes Marketplace on Monday. STAFF PHOTO/CAROL LOLLIS

Cait MacMullin and Mark Norris get their photos taken in the analog photo booth on the second floor of Thornes Marketplace on Monday.

Cait MacMullin and Mark Norris get their photos taken in the analog photo booth on the second floor of Thornes Marketplace on Monday. STAFF PHOTOS/CAROL LOLLIS

 Mark Norris and Cait MacMullin look at their photos taken in the photo booth on the second floor of Thornes Marketplace on Monday. Ryan Stratton, who owns and maintains the booth, estimates there are only about 150 left in the United States.

Mark Norris and Cait MacMullin look at their photos taken in the photo booth on the second floor of Thornes Marketplace on Monday. Ryan Stratton, who owns and maintains the booth, estimates there are only about 150 left in the United States.

 Mark Norris and Cait MacMullin look at their photos taken in the old-fashioned analog photo booth on the second floor of Thornes Marketplace on Monday.

Mark Norris and Cait MacMullin look at their photos taken in the old-fashioned analog photo booth on the second floor of Thornes Marketplace on Monday. STAFF PHOTO/CAROL LOLLIS

By ALEXANDER MACDOUGALL

Staff Writer

Published: 12-26-2024 4:32 PM

NORTHAMPTON — On the second floor of Thornes Marketplace stands what was once a common occurrence in malls across America, but like malls is fading into obscurity with the advent of the digital age.

It’s a photo booth, where people can come, sit inside and have photos taken either by themselves or with a friend or two. While photo booths are not unfamiliar to younger audiences, what makes this one so unique is that it is completely analog: no computer devices are used in its photo developing process.

Ryan Stratton, who has maintained and overseen the photo booth since 2021, helps explain the process. After snapping the flash photos, a roll of paper strips is turned absorbing the light exposure, before being deposited onto a mechanical arm that dunks the strip into four different chemicals to develop the film before printing it out to take home. The entire process takes about three minutes to complete, more the five times longer than a digital photo booth would take.

Still, Stratton says, the photo booth remains popular with visitors to Thornes.

“December is a big month for it, because the building in general is just so busy from holiday shopping,” he said. “Somebody posted a video of them taking their engagement photos here, and they drove all the way from Boston.”

Stratton took over ownership of the booth three years ago amid the downtime of the pandemic, though the booth has been there since at least 1995. Maintenance on the machine is no easy task — the company that purchased and distributed the booths, manufactured in the United Kingdom, no longer exists, so they cannot be contacted. The paper strips the photos develop on were also manufactured in Russia, so ordering new ones is challenging amid ongoing geopolitical tensions.

Instead, Stratton relies on an informal network of fellow analog photo booth owners across America, who are readily available via social media. Some of them have maintaining booths for years, others like Stratton have only been working on them for a short time. Stratton estimates there are about 150 analog photo booths left across the United States.

“Thankfully, people are pretty generous online. The owners are pretty free to share,” he said. “There’s pockets of these machines in Denver and Chicago, and of course New York and L.A. There aren’t that many in a small town.”

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Stratton, who is from Greenfield and has a background in photography, had been interested in acquiring a vintage booth for some time before luckily managing to find one within the confines of the Pioneer Valley.

“I always liked doing analog stuff, the darkroom stuff,” Stratton said. “I’ve learned a lot about electrical work, and cleaning and oiling and lubricating things.”

Stratton soon got in touch with other photo booth owners, often reaching out through Instagram. The Northampton photo booth maintains its own Instagram account, @photobooth_noho, with Stratton sometimes posting his own photos taken in the booth.

Last summer, Stratton was finally able to connect in-person with the community of his fellow analog booth owners, at a convention held in London attended by more than 50 people, getting to see the booths that still existed in the city.

“It was a lot of fun and just hanging out, doing some art projects, but also talking about the paper supply or how to take apart the transmission,” Stratton said. “It was great to see some of these people in person and go, hey, another nerd, another weirdo like me.”

Alexander MacDougall can be reached at amacdougall@gazettenet.com.