Self-Portrait with Photo Booth 1987

Curator: This is Steven Pippin’s “Self-Portrait with Photo Booth,” a wonderfully strange image that feels like a dream. Editor: It's stark and surreal. Like something unearthed from a forgotten city archive. Curator: Pippin, born in 1960, often repurposes everyday objects. Here, he's ingeniously used a photo booth to create an outdoor camera. Editor: Right, it subverts our expectations. We think of photo booths as intimate, contained spaces. Here, it's opened onto the city. And the perspective is bizarre. Curator: The scale is disorienting, too. Pippin himself seems almost an afterthought in this grand, slightly gritty urban landscape. Editor: I think it's brilliant how he challenges the notion of a self-portrait. It's not just about capturing a likeness, but about our relationship with the environment and the technology we use to record it. Curator: Exactly! A blurry memory of how we shape our worlds—and how they shape us. Editor: A perfect photo that captures the imperfectness of time.