1930

I left school in 1930. My Aunt Polly, my mother’s sister (five years her junior) and her husband, Uncle Joe, owned and managed a large photographic studio on Main Street in Winnipeg.¹ The studio alone must have been at least one thousand square feet. They offered me an apprenticeship plus fifty cents a week in exchange for cleaning the studio.

One day my aunt asked me to clean a bunch of negatives that she had just finished retouching. I naturally cleaned the side she had retouched because the other side of the negative looked clean. Needless to say, she had to retouch each negative over again. 

I was so busy scrubbing floors and cleaning I didn’t have time to learn the trade. I did however learn to wash and dry prints and make contact proofs by sunlight. The main advantage of the job was that I became familiar with the ins and outs of darkroom work by association and became interested enough to make it a career.

I refused to wash the floors one day, so my aunt told me to wash floors or leave. I went home, thinking my mother would be angry with me. When I told my mother what happened she said “Good for you!”

I left the studio and found a job at City Park for the summer at photo booth.

Photo booths, which were introduced in the 1920s, when strips cost 25 cents, are not created equal. Those with black and white film are the most desirable among club goers and the Hollywood elite, and they must be “dip ‘n’ dunks,” as they are known in the business, which were manufactured before the early 80s.²

Those cheesy, old photo booths from everybody’s past, you know, the ones from strip malls and bus stations? Those old things are making a comeback. Suddenly they’re trendy, they’re hot, CBS News’ Bill Whitaker reports.³

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¹ Star Photo Studio, 488 – 490 Main Street, Winnipeg was owned by Angela’s uncle, Joseph Galdzinski. Return

² Why Hollywood’s Saying Cheese by Strawberry Saroyan, New York Times News Service, 2005. Return

³ Fun and Freedom in the Photo Booth by Sean Alfano, CBS, July 31, 2005. Return