An up-coming book, ‘Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits’, tells the story of Alan Adler, a man who is likely the most photographed person in Australia and the oldest and longest-serving photobooth technician.
The cover of the new book documenting the life of Alan Adler, a man who is likely the the most photographed person in Australia, and is also perhaps the oldest and longest-serving photobooth technician in the world.
Co-published by Perimeter Editions and the Centre for Contemporary Photography, ‘Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits’ is an ode to a man who, by sustaining the production of photographs, actively lives through them. 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.
‘Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits’ will be launched ahead of a major exhibition in 2025, features texts by Patrick Pound, Catlin Langford, and Daniel Boetker-Smith, along with an interview with Alan Adler, Jessie Norman, and Christopher Sutherland. The launch will take place at 3:00 p.m. on Saturday, 5 October at the Centre for Contemporary Photography Project Space, Collingwood Yards, 35 Johnston St, Collingwood.
