Istilah selfie baru masuk dalam kamus Oxford pada tahun 2013. Kini, warga dunia pun dilanda demam aksi mengambil foto sendiri tersebut. Mulai dari pemimpin dunia, artis, hingga atlet gemar melakukan foto selfie.
Baru-baru ini, sejarawan fotografi bernama Donald Lokuta menemukan ratusan foto selfie seorang pria yang diduga diambil antara tahun 1930-an dan 1960-an. Foto itu ditemukan dalam setumpuk barang antik yang dibelinya dari seorang pedagang di New York.
Terdapat lebih 445 foto memperlihatkan sosok pria yang sama yang diambil dalam rentang waktu tertentu. Foto yang diambil dalam photobooth itu menunjukkan sang pria dalam berbagai balutan busana dan ekspresi wajah berbeda.
Lokuta percaya pria misterius tersebut mungkin bekerja untuk sebuah perusahaan photobooth dan mengambil foto sebagai uji coba.
"Ada cukup perbedaan usia dalam foto: Anda melihat ia sebagai pria yang lebih muda dan kemudian dengan helai rambut yang berkurang, putih, dan keriput," ujar Lokuta seperti dilansir laman Telegraph.
Sebagai sejarawan, ujar dia, hal ini sangat jarang. Ia pun bertanya-tanya mengapa seseorang mengambil hampir 500 foto dirinya sendiri dalam sebuah photobooth.
Rencananya, foto-foto ini akan dipamerkan untuk pertama kali sebagai bagian dari pameran Striking Resemblance: The Changing Art of Portraiture di Zimmerli Art Museum, Amerika Serikat (AS)
The Fun Stop Photos digital photo booth is known for making memories and having fun. But, as a photo booth operator, have you ever wondered whether the photo strips printed by your Fun Stop Photos photo booth will be around long after you're gone?
Recently, Rutgers Today reported about a man who, over the course of three decades, took and saved more than 450 photo booth prints of himself. The photo booth images were taken during the Great Depression era of the 1930’s through the 1960’s, when photo booths were extremely popular.
The collection of his photo booth prints, captioned “445 Portraits of a Man,” is on display at Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, in an exhibition titled ”Striking Resemblance: The Changing Art of Portraiture.”
Until now, the identity of the man of photo-booth-selfie fame remained a mystery.
The hundreds of photo booth images were purchased in 2012 by photography historian Donald Lokuta, who discovered them at a New York City antiques show. Coincidentally, several of the same man's photo booth selfies were owned by photo booth historian Näkki Goranin, author of "American Photobooth." Research by Lokuta and Goranin revealed that the photo booth prints were originally sold at a Michigan auction, but the identity of the man in the photo booth remained unknown.
Goranin theorized, “It’s not a given that the guy worked for the photobooth company. It could be that he’s just a quirky personality. I’ve seen a lot of things in my research, but this collection is very strange.”
The “445 Portraits of a Man” photo booth collection became the main attraction of the art exhibit. Zimmerli curator Donna Gustafson said, "I wanted this collection in the exhibition because everyone is intrigued by photo booths, and these portraits were never intended to be shown in a museum."
The identity of this photo booth star remained a mystery until just last week. Photo booth operators will not be surprised to learn that the subject of so many photo booth prints was Franklyn Swantek, owner of Swantek Photo Service, Michigan’s largest distributor and operator of Photomatic photo booths.
Swantek’s nephew, Tom Trelenberg of Minden, Nevada, recognized Swantek’s photo booth image online and identified his jovial Uncle Franklyn. "Uncle Franklyn was a lot of fun, just a cheerful guy. It's why I kept going back," Trelenberg said. "I remember helping him tear apart Photomatics that weren't being used anymore. As payment, he let me keep whatever I found in the coin box."
Swantek’s family described him as an avid fisherman and co-owner of a plane, who was also a jokester until his passing in the mid-1980’s.
The assumption is that Franklyn Swantek took hundreds of photo booth self-portraits while testing the photo booths on his route. Though, some of his photo booth images must have been taken as sheer entertainment, as he wore a fake nose and glasses as props in the photo booth at times.
The mystery remains as to what possessed Swantek to save all of the photo booth prints?
And, would Swantek be pleased or appalled to learn that his collection of photo booth selfies became the main attraction of the Zimmerli Art Museum exhibit?
Photo from Zimmerli Art Museum
At digital photo booth manufacturer Team Play, Inc., we think that Uncle Franklyn is secretly pleased with his photo booth selfie fame!
At least one fact has remained constant since the Great Depression, unchanged for decades: everybody loves photo booths! You can rest assured that your self-portrait photo booth documentary will survived the decades if taken with a Fun Stop Photos photo booth. Our photo booths dispense dye-sublimation prints of the highest quality, designed to last virtually forever.
So the next time you service your photo booth, why not toss the photo strips into a box for posterity? You, too, could one day be the star of a photo booth art exhibit!
Sumber :
1. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2597066/Three-decades-selfies-Mystery-man-took-445-photobooth-portraits-30-years-knows-is.html
2. http://www.teamplayinc.net/1/post/2014/06/photo-booth-selfie-fame.html
3. http://life.viva.co.id/news/read/495035-ditemukan--ratusan-foto-selfie-dari-tahun-1940-an
