Simon Murphy brings Berlin's Photoautomat to Glasgow

Recently, a whirring has been heard across Glasgow’s social media channels. The swish of a curtain, a click and a bright flash. A glut of new profile pictures in chic black and white fills the feed with glass-skinned baddies who look like they’re fresh out of a nineties edition of The Face. In 2026, you might expect this to be some new AI trend. Instead, it’s the work of a real, clanking, sulphuric-smelling, chemical-powered Photoautomat booth installed at Trongate 103.

It has been brought to Glasgow by photographer and lecturer Simon Murphy. His love of these metal booths was forged over years of taking students on architectural photography trips to Berlin. Eventually, he approached the local operators with an idea to bring one of their machines to Scotland.

Glasgow’s edition was then built from parts in the Berlin warehouse, which is filled with decommissioned booths, donated and bought from across Europe. "Parts of it could be from the 50s, parts could be from the 80s, but it's really hard to know for sure," explains Murphy. 

It’s a Frankenstein-like construction, kept alive by a dwindling pool of specialist knowledge. Murphy estimates that only around 200 people worldwide know how to operate or maintain the booths.

Perhaps the fleeting nature of the booth is part of its appeal, and users can sense that it may not last forever. The appeal is certainly not one of convenience, with the booth having restricted opening hours, often a queue, and then a five-minute wait time for the image to develop. There’s also a lack of editing, with the shutter going off with little warning and no ability to retake the photo, let alone facetune or filter yourself. 

However, this doesn’t seem to dissuade the queue. Murphy agrees: "All of the inconveniences are the things that make it special, make it good, and that says that we're hungering for… well, everything’s just instant [nowadays]. We can get what we want when we want.

“I think this is a more honest portrait, as well,” he adds. It doesn’t hurt that the contrast and lighting seems to make everyone look particularly flawless. There’s also the physical delight of the booth, the shiny golden exterior, the tangible nature of the process, the excitement of the queue and the anticipatory wait for your photo to come whirring out.

Murphy’s own fascination began with the booths as subjects themselves. "The intention actually was a personal project, and it was about the booths. But when I was in Berlin, little things happened that just… I couldn't help myself but bring people into it.

Photoautomat cover. Credit: Simon Murphy.

“I would go out early in the morning to photograph – because that's the best light – and often I would find strips that had been left behind – so people coming out of clubs getting a photograph and thinking it's broken because they're not prepared to wait five minutes [for the strip to be developed].

"So people, or ghosts, started coming into the project."

The Berlin project culminates in a beautifully finished photobook, filled with diverse faces from Murphy’s early morning trips, and created with graphic designer Tom Booth Woodger. Each copy will get its own unique cover with a photo-strip inlay, echoing the “unique quality of an individual chemical processed photostrip and each of the Berlin analogue machines.”

As for the diverse range of faces who have found themselves at Trongate 103 in the last few weeks, Murphy explains the while the queue is undiscerning, he’s noticed trends appear: "You've got people who want to recreate photographs… people who were maybe children in the photograph, and they got a picture with their parent, and they want to recreate that with their own child.”

“But then – it's weird – on some days, it's just a line of prams, almost like someone's decided this is the day to bring in the baby in the pram.”

Then of course, “the engagement announcement, or the wedding shot… and people tend to kiss on the third one, the third flash!”

There seems to be something magical about these machines, which gives a moment some extra gravity. 

"What was just you and your friends jumping in and having a wee laugh together 40 years ago – all of a sudden, one of those friends might no longer be here. Or it reminds you of a summer, you know, maybe a particular summer, or music. And it's just – all of a sudden – this one image brings all of the senses alive. That's the power of photography."

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Get early access to the Berlin Photoautomat book via Kickstarter
Photoautomat Glasgow can be accessed during Trongate 103's opening hours, more details at @photoautomatglasgow on Instagram