Found Photos from Japan


Found in Kashiwa, November, 1996. Found in Kashiwa, November, 1996.

Found in Tennodai station, 16-Sep-96. Found in Gion Square, Kyoto, 1-Sep-96.

These pictures are from the "Photo-Club" style machines which are ubiquitous in Japan. These are photo-booth machines that produce little stickers in a couple minutes using a digital photography system. You can select overlays for the photo, as depicted above. For ¥300 (around $3 American) you can get 16 of these stickers in a sheet. (The first three pictures above are these type of stickers; the fourth one is slightly bigger and much higher resolution. It was perhaps created using a chemical-based photographic process, or at least a much higher-resolution digital one.) The photo stickers are extremely popular, especially among Japanese schoolgirls, and there is a whole secondary industry that makes keychains, frames, decorative sticker overlays, and books to put the stickers in. It is always a big event when a new revision of the photo machines (and therefore new digital overlays) are released; the lines to use these machines may frequently stretch down the block.

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by Lee Kilpatrick (leekil) 16-Oct-1997