This article appears as part of the Herald Arts newsletter.

Do you remember photo-booths? They still exist, of course. But do you remember the ones where you didn’t have to pay with a smartphone then download the images from a website using a code and an app and an unholy confection of algorithms?

Where instead of all that digital malarkey you just fed in your coins, pulled whatever face you wanted in the booth then waited while the machine buzzed and whirred and eventually spat out a strip of resolutely analogue photos still sticky from the developing process?

Anyone old enough to apply for a passport at the dawn of the internet will certainly recall these sorts of photo-booths. They stood in bus and train stations, and in whichever corner of Woolworths was closest to the pick and mix. Today, however, they are vanishingly rare, which means they also have the glossy patina of 1980s and 1990s nostalgia – which means an initiative at Edinburgh’s Stills photography gallery is likely to have the hipsters out in force.

Being of the ageing variety and therefore able to remember negotiating photo-booths, I was second in line (behind a BBC film crew) when the new venture was unveiled to the members of the press last week. It’s called the Stillsautomat and for £7 you can mug for the camera in four separate shots and be presented with a crisp black and white photo strip to commemorate the event. I let my hair down (literally) and gave the world the finger.

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