Analogue photo booths in Berlin: A stage, a trap, a condenser, and four shots for kissing the person you love

[First paragraph] Why do analogue photos still fascinate young people? Why, for some purposes, might vintage technologies be considered more authentic than newer ones? And what is the contribution of old-school photo booths to Berlin as a city? To explore these questions in depth, I dedicated several months to observing people around analogue photo booths. My purpose was not to elaborate a ‘thick’ description of the uses of these machines, but rather to think about the reasons new generations are still attracted by these seemingly obsolete machines, and to ask what kind of input old-school booths make in the production of Berlin’s atmosphere and charm. As I saw during my fieldwork, hundreds of people use them every day, for the purpose of recording key moments in their lives, and to materialize relationships and events, using, paradoxically, an analogue machine that had disappeared from the cityscape, being considered obsolete, only twenty years ago.