Among the most maddening contemporary conceits is the near-slavish acceptance of technological “progress.” This despite the many comparative shortcomings of electronic books, MP3s’ clear sonic inferiority to LPs, and, as Canadian artist and writer Meags Fitzgerald points out in her debut graphic novel, Photobooth: A Biography, the fact that digital photobooths lack the most appealing features of “dip ’n’ dunk” chemical development booths that they have almost entirely replaced.
Winner of the Canadian comics industry’s 2015 Doug Wright Spotlight Award, Photobooth is a conspicuously handsome volume. Fitzgerald mixes a history of chemical photobooths with her own personal journey in using them as she deftly blends graphic novel conventions with more traditional arrangements of text and pictures.
In chemical...
Kenton Smith is a freelance writer and arts and culture critic whose writing on comics has appeared in The Globe and Mail, Quill and Quire, the Winnipeg Free Press and Canadian Art. He has also written for Broken Pencil magazine and CBC.ca.
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