Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits
Alan Adler
Perimeter Editions and Centre for Contemporary Photography
English
Edited by Catlin Langford
Softcover
256 pages
147 x 256 mm
2024
ISBN 9781922545350
Very little about the photobooth experience has changed since its inception in the early twentieth century. There is a particular charm to its inherent simplicity and repetition. The framing is fixed, as is the lighting, backdrop, and time between photographs. Only we, the subject, are the ones that change.
Co-published by Perimeter Editions and the Centre for Contemporary Photography, ‘Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits’ tells the story of Alan Adler, a man who is likely the most photographed person in Australia, and is also perhaps the oldest and longest-serving photobooth technician in the world.
For more than fifty years, Adler maintained a suite of photobooths across Melbourne/Naarm – most notably, at a site near Flinders Street Station – and would undertake weekly testing and servicing on each photobooth across his network. To ensure the focus, flash, and print quality were all up to standard at the end of each service, Adler would take a seat in the booth and produce a test strip of photographs. Through these weekly tests, Adler produced an archive of thousands upon thousands of photographs. While his decades-long operation has contributed to the photography of over a million people, these self-portraits are the only surviving record of Adler’s life’s work – a tangible document of his role in maintaining the photobooth tradition. The images that appear in ‘Auto-Photo’, which span from the 1970s to the 2010s, give us clues about the person who inhabits them, along with the passing of time. Adler’s gappy grin, comedic expressions, and pet cats intermingle with shifting fashions, retro colour film tints, and an increasing crinkling around the eyes.
(Source: https://www.lensculture.com/articles/alan-adler-auto-photo-a-life-in-pictures)
About the Artist
Alan Adler was possibly Australia’s most photographed man, having tested his analog photobooths with weekly selfies for more than 50 years. With a legacy that now includes a photobook and an upcoming exhibition at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, he leaves us with so much to remember him.
(Source: https://www.1854.photography/2025/02/alan-adler-photobooth/)
About the Publisher
Established in 1986, CCP has become a central figure in Australia’s creative lens-based arts scene. As a multifaceted institution, the CCP functions as a gallery, educational resource, professional development hub, and community space, fostering innovation in visual arts. For almost 40 years the CCP has played a crucial role in nurturing and showcasing new talent in photography, art, curating, arts writing, and interdisciplinary practices.
https://ccp.org.au/
(Source: https://ccp.org.au/about/purpose/)
Perimeter is a specialised bookstore, award-winning publisher, distribution house and platform for various art publishing endeavours in Melbourne, Australia. Perimeter respectfully acknowledges the Wurundjeri People of the Kulin Nation as the Traditional Owners of the land on which we operate, and we acknowledge that this land is unceded. We pay our respects to Elders past, present and emerging. Founded in 2011, Perimeter Books stocks a selective range of independently published books, editions and zines spanning photography, art, theory, text and the more lateral ends of design and architecture.
https://www.perimeterbooks.com/
(Source: https://www.perimeterbooks.com/pages/about)
