Is it curtains for the photobooth?

Travellers can now use photographs taken on their mobiles when applying for a passport online. But the future for the photobooth is a developing picture

Long before Instagram and iPhones, Snapchat and Kim Kardashian, there was a Siberian immigrant in New York City who was about to get very rich. Fascinated by his Brownie box camera, the Kodak device that brought photography to the masses, Anatol Josephowitz arrived in Manhattan with plans to go further, foreshadowing the selfie age a good 80 years before its time.

In 1925, Josepho (he dropped the -witz) unveiled his Photomaton, a small automatic studio with a stool that would return a strip of eight postage-stamp portraits in exchange for 25 cents. "Broadway's greatest quarter-snatcher" was a sensation, making Josepho famous. In 1927, he sold the US rights to his machines for $1m.