‘I look deranged, but my baby looks happy!’ Nine writers on their favourite photo booth picture

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Emine Saner
I didn’t find early motherhood easy. It wasn’t my daughter’s fault – she was, mercifully, a wonderful and cheerful baby – but I underestimated what a huge shift it would be at an already stressful time. When I was pregnant, we moved to a new town, to a wreck of a house we planned to do up. My mum, who was ill, moved in with us, and then I was the carer of a newborn and a dying parent – at the two extremes of life, but sharing many of the same needs, and often at the same time.
My daughter’s first year was the last year of my mother’s life – and probably the loneliest of mine. One of the dark secrets of new motherhood is how lonely it can be, and I had made it worse for myself by moving to a place where I didn’t know anyone. I would go to baby groups in the morning, not sure how I could make friends when I didn’t even know who I was any more. Long dark afternoons would drag on, and I’d force myself to walk endlessly with the pram, resentfully noticing other new mothers who had their own mothers with them. This photo, taken in a town centre Boots photo booth in 2014, when my daughter was seven months old, was for my partner’s birthday card, but more importantly was a way of killing time on one of those afternoons. I’d planned to dress us up for each of the four snaps, but wrangling a wriggling baby in a small space, with seconds between pictures, meant only the sunglasses made it.
In kinder moments, I can be proud of how I (just about) coped that year, but I’m not often kind to myself. Mostly I feel guilty for bringing my daughter, who was planned and wanted, into a life with a mum who was already grieving. But memory is also unkind, because although I now remember it as a difficult time, I know it was also filled with fun, and love, as this photo reminds me. I look deranged, as I probably did that entire year, but my baby looks happy.
Zoe Williams
In 1987, my sister and I were going to Hamburg for one of our dad’s first or second cousins’ first or second weddings. I was 14, she was 16 and I think only one of us needed a passport photo but we went to a photo booth for the kicks. It was on the concourse of Victoria station in London, but scrub everything you might know about what that looks like now, because this was the end of the degraded 80s, and Caffè Nero hadn’t been invented. Costa Coffee had, but it was so novel we used to call it Costa Packet. If you wanted to orientate yourself – meet someone there, remember who the hell you were – you had to do it by a platform number or the clock.
Anyway, just before I went behind the curtain, she said, “Wait! You have a hair on your chin.”
I’m 52 now, and I’m sure I speak for all of us when I say a rogue hair is no big deal. You wouldn’t bat an eye if one came out of your ear to meet one growing out of your nose. But I was 14. She went to brush it away; nothing happened. She brushed it again. “Wait, it’s …” She yanked it. “It’s growing. It’s growing out of your face.” She started laughing so hard she was crying before she even made any noise. I don’t know if anybody’s ever noticed this before, but it’s really hard, when your sister is laughing, not to laugh. Soon I was bent double, and my mascara had run, and we needed to go to the loo before the photo to sort it out, which set us back 30 whole pence – a steaming rip-off then, but at least you could make change.
We went off, fixed my eye makeup, came back, and she said, “Wait! You didn’t get the hair out of your face?” If we’d been different people, in another age, one of us would have had tweezers, but we didn’t, and pulling it with your fingers isn’t a skill you’re born with. She started laughing again, and fully wet herself. We’d dropped a king’s ransom on the facilities and she hadn’t even weed.
You can’t really tell from the photos that anything’s happened, but every time the hair grows back – jet black and incredibly luscious, approximately biweekly – and every time I pass a photo booth, and every time I use a passport, I start laughing again. That hair, and the day itself, are as fresh as the day they were born.
Ammar Kalia
Growing up, my Saturdays mainly consisted of traipsing to the local Asda for the weekly food shop. While my mum worked at her optician’s business, my dad would drag me from aisle to aisle for hours, scouring the shelves for the best deals before heading to the high street grocers for their specialities – cheap cucumbers at one, waxy lemons at another, kilos of rice at the last. This was practical, purposeful father-son time, an experience rooted in care but distinctly lacking in fun.
Saturdays were different when my mum had a day off. Suddenly, the food shop was abandoned and instead we might go to the cinema or eat KFC for lunch, since her care was instinctual and often chaotic.
On one of these Saturdays with her in the late 90s, when I was four or five, my older brother and grandma joined us to head to Hounslow’s Treaty Centre, the local, plastic-floored shopping centre. I can’t remember why we were all together but I do remember my mum spotting a photo booth in a dark corner and insisting we capture the moment.

It reminds me of spontaneous Saturdays of fun with my mum

I had only been in a booth once before, to take my passport photo, and the prospect of us all cramming in was exciting and overwhelming. My mum fed a note into the machine and since my grandma was wearing a sari, we stuffed her with her folds of fabric in the back first. My mum then sat on the stool and perched me on her lap while my preteen brother squeezed in. She tapped at the controls as we squirmed, growing confused at the range of options available.
Suddenly, the camera flashed and we jumped in shock. Someone began giggling, then we all did, and the bulb flashed again. The same thing happened three more times, to increasing bewilderment. Finally, enough time went by in silence and we realised it was over. We tumbled out of the booth, sweating and picked up the five images my mum had bought.
A year later, my grandma died of bowel cancer. My mum had those images framed and put on her dressing table as a reminder of that day. When I was 19, my mum died of cancer too, and ever since I’ve had that same frame on my desk.
I look at it every day and each time I see something new: joy, tiredness, youth, old age, love. It makes me think of my mum’s body close to mine, that warmth and protection I’ll never experience again. If it wasn’t for the photo booth, that fleeting moment would never have been captured. It’s also a constant reminder of those spontaneous Saturdays of fun my mum would create, and it spurs me to carry on living as she would, being open to silliness and distraction – even if it means the food shop has to wait.
Remona Aly
It was 1997, during my second year at university, when my accidental interfaith girl gang and I – a Catholic, a Protestant, a Muslim and an atheist (plus her boyfriend at the time) – piled into a photo booth. We spotted the little selfie-kiosk during a spontaneous Saturday out in Staines – the closest fun town we could get to from our leafy Surrey campus.
The resulting picture captures a formative moment for me. I was navigating a different, sometimes challenging, identity as a new hijab wearer. Back at home, several people hadn’t exactly welcomed my decision. One grimaced, another called me a nun, a few asked if I was now a fundamentalist. Headscarves were rare in the late 90s, and here at university, I worried about how people might react. But, as I grappled with unsupportive reactions and snide remarks, the women in the picture were my rocks.
Dom, Abi, Hannah and I bonded right from freshers’ week. We studied classics and English literature between us and chatted over Tesco Value toast and tea until the early hours.
When I’d first moved into student halls, I felt out of place as I unpacked; finding a corner of a shared bathroom to hide my lota (basically a bidet, Indian style), which was actually a measuring jug. I was nervous about wearing my simple black hijab in a public setting for the first time. But, while I didn’t escape the odd uncomfortable remark from other students – once a guy in a lift grabbed hold of the end of my hijab and sneered, “What is this?”, another scoffed that I must know all about women’s rights – these three women took me for who I was from day one, measuring jug and all.
They carried me towards more confidence. They helped me step into a space where I could feel more rooted in my faith and myself. They often joined me for student Islamic society events – granted, they were mainly there for the food, but it also felt natural for my non-Muslim friends to be part of that world with me.
Meanwhile our uni house was known to have the best parties – anyone and everyone could join. There’d be bottles of booze in the kitchen, and when it was time to pray, I’d sneak off to my room, sticking a paper sign on my door saying, “Prayer in progress”, so my housemates knew not to barge in. Although one of them thought it would be hilarious to cross through the word “prayer” and scribble “smoking” instead. I keep that scrap of paper in my student diary to this day.
This humble picture is more than just a photo booth image. It’s a visual reminder of how these three women were a core part of my story. They helped me feel more certain of who I was. I don’t remember a time I have ever felt more safe.
Morwenna Ferrier
The afternoon we took this there was no party, no event. Just me and my friend mid-week sinking a bottle of rosé while I periodically dragged her outside to smoke, unworried about anything because back then – 2017 – we lived lives that allowed for that.
Now, of course, we are serious people and I’d sooner stick my hand on a hotplate than step into one of those booths. But that day, we’d just come out of the bathroom and found the booth, wedged into the corridor, with no queue. My friend nudged me inside and we started dicking about.
As you can see, she is a visual person, and I am not. But I think on some level I was flattered that she wanted a photo with me. I never saw myself as a “fun” person, and I’ve never been good at navigating any gathering that involved getting one of these photos with your mates.
Maybe that’s why I like this photo, even though I still hate the forced fun of it. Because it captured a precise moment of nothingness, a person caught halfway between who she was and who she wanted to be, and her friend who liked her all the same.
Rich Pelley
I spent most of the 00s blagging me and my mate Phil into the Virgin Media Louder Lounge at V Festival in Chelmsford. Not only was the ticket to the festival free, but once inside this roped-off section, you could eat and drink as much as you like, safely shielded from the rest of the festivalgoers. We’d spend the days sipping free cocktails and barely watching any music, alongside former Big Brother contestants and journalists who had clearly promised coverage when they hadn’t even packed a pen.
This photo was taken in 2012, when we nearly missed the Stone Roses as Phil had booked a free massage. By the time the Killers headlined, we were already home, watching it on telly instead.
The V Festival shut down in 2017. This photo reminds me that, these days, I’m far happier among the punters who have paid good money to watch their favourite bands and celebrate the unparalleled emotion of feeling collectively human.
Sundus Abdi
Ramla and I have been friends since we were 11 – long enough to have a shared archive of badly lit photos. We met at the mosque the summer before secondary school, when I initially tried to act too cool to talk to her, a mix of shyness and misplaced confidence. Later, when my mum came to pick me up, I waved to Ramla from the car. She asked who the new girl was, and I said: “My new best friend.” Apparently her sister asked her the same question, and Ramla gave the same answer.
We grew up side by side in Birmingham: getting in trouble together, eating chips after school, enduring many awkward phases. As teenagers who lived on Pinterest and Tumblr, taking photo booth pictures in Urban Outfitters was peak coolness – it was proof you’d had a proper day out. After shopping trips or iced-coffee runs, we’d cram into the booth, adjusting our hijabs as the countdown started, trying to look presentable.
Recently, after both moving to London, we decided to take another strip of photos to mark the new beginning. It felt like a full-circle moment: the same poses and panic before the first flash, except this time we were in our mid-20s, pretending to be composed adults. When the strip finally printed, we burst out laughing. The photos came out exactly as they always did – slightly offbeat and wildly unflattering. We’ve taken so many together over the years, most now buried in books and memory boxes. One of us always keeps a copy, promising not to lose it again.
The new strip is already creased from being passed between us and living in the bottom of our bags. I’ll probably lose it again, but that’s fine. We can always take another.
Sasha Mistlin
I met my girlfriend in the summer of 2023, a few months after a period of mental illness that had taken me out of work and left me rebuilding from scratch. She was different immediately – not in some mythical love-at-first-sight way, but she was adventurous and willing to trust a near-stranger to come along for the ride. By our fourth date, we’d booked flights to Rome, where she’d gone to school, which promised life-changing burrata and anchovy sandwiches.
Then came a pair of stumbling blocks: her grandfather died the week we were meant to go and the trip clashed with his funeral. She decided to come anyway but the emotional stakes were certainly raised. Then, the night before our flight, I realised my passport was too close to expiry for me to board the plane. We sat dejected in an airport Pret, wondering if we were really meant to be after all.
But then a brainwave. Why not reroute to Cambridge instead – the closest city to Stansted and somewhere I knew well from my time at university? Something about it made sense: I could show her somewhere that mattered to me when I couldn’t yet see the places that mattered to her.

My expression is caught somewhere between smug and lost; hers is half amused, half guarded

That first night, we ended up in Revolution, a shots bar familiar to any British student. It was early on a Wednesday evening and I ordered a birthday cake shot – a drink I’d always had a borderline fascination with: why would anyone deliberately choose to associate childhood nostalgia with adult bad decisions? The bar was almost empty, and when we kissed, we felt suddenly, absurdly visible. So we pulled back the curtain on a photo booth whose backdrop announced: “V is for Vodka”.
I’d loved photo booths as a young teenager at the height of the millennial revival of 90s technology. The booths were ever present, wedged into the corner of every barmitzvah and birthday party. But I hadn’t used one in years.
The strip came out in four uneven frames, my expression caught somewhere between smug and lost, hers half-amused, half guarded. They’re still my favourite pictures of us, possibly because there aren’t many others to compete with. Neither of us are really photo people. There’s something contrived about posed pictures that makes us both uncomfortable – whereas photo booths are so contrived they somehow become acceptable.
Two years on, I’m writing this from another departure lounge, heading to Portugal for our second anniversary. That photo booth strip, now living in a drawer with old cards and holiday trinkets, captured something I didn’t know I needed: proof that something great can start anywhere.
Emma Loffhagen
I have always been a sucker for photo booths – as soon as I walk into a pub or a club and spot one, I can instantly feel the money leaving my bank account. My bedroom walls and camera roll are littered with the evidence of years of cramming unwitting friends (and strangers) behind curtains.
Of my cadre of photo booth memories, one stands out. It was August 2021, the first summer after the second Covid lockdown. I had just turned 22, and was moving out of my parents’ house into a new flat with three of my best friends from university. Life felt as though it had been on pause for a year, the promise of post-graduation freedom frozen in the stale air of cancelled plans and Zoom birthdays.
Our move-in date happened to coincide with my flatmate’s birthday party, so we all rushed to pile our boxes into the flat before dashing out. It was frenetic, but things were happening in a way they hadn’t for so long – the sense of forward motion felt giddy.

I remember the dizzy joy and the feeling that a new chapter had finally begun

The space was packed full of friends from university, people I hadn’t seen in one room together in more than a year. We hadn’t been able to have a proper graduation, our university experience cut short the previous year by the pandemic.
My flatmates and I commandeered the photo booth, and took a series of increasingly chaotic group shots, the kind where no one quite manages to look at the camera at the same time. The memory of the photo booth itself is a bit of a blur, but what I do remember is the overwhelming, dizzy joy of it, and the feeling that a new chapter of our lives had finally begun.
The next morning, we christened our then-bare fridge with one of the photostrips, a door that has since become crammed full of magnets and memories from four years of living together. When I look at those photos now I can see the pure relief on our faces, and a reminder of when the world cracked open again and we rushed headfirst into it.
• The Photographers’ Gallery in London is marking the centenary of the photo booth with Strike a Pose: 100 Years of the Photobooth, until 22 February 2026