Art & Culture · Paris

At Paris Photo, Turin Turns a Century-Old Booth Into a Living Exhibition

A vintage photo booth becomes both subject and studio as torino: fotografia invites artists to make new portraits in real time at the Grand Palais.

November 11, 2026  ·  By MSM Editorial Desk

At Paris Photo this week, a familiar red curtain opens onto a new kind of exhibition. For its first appearance at the international photography fair, Turin’s torino: fotografia has built its stand around a working analogue photo booth—and invited artists to make the show as it unfolds.

The project marks 100 years of the photo booth. Invented in 1925, the machine reached Times Square in 1926 and Paris in 1928. It began as a practical way to make identity pictures, but artists soon recognized what its four-frame strip could do: repeat a gesture, create a rhythm and turn a brief encounter with the camera into a small sequence of images.

At the Grand Palais, the stand is designed as an active studio. A vintage booth supplied by Autofoto will be used by invited photographers, whose new portraits are displayed on the surrounding walls as the fair progresses. The installation will change from day to day, giving visitors a reason to look again—and making the process of creating the work part of the exhibition itself.

The invited artists include Martina Bacigalupo, Raymond Depardon, Omar Victor Diop, Jess T. Dugan, Mitch Epstein, Joan Fontcuberta, Harry Gruyaert, Susan Meiselas, Sarah Moon, Zanele Muholi, Cristina Mittermeier and Paolo Woods, among others. Their participation connects a century-old photographic device with a wide range of contemporary practices.

The project also looks back to Franco Vaccari, whose landmark presentation at the 1972 Venice Biennale treated the photo booth as a place where visitors could produce and leave behind their own images. At Paris Photo, that participatory idea returns in a new setting: the booth is not simply displayed, but put to work.

Turin’s photography scene takes the stage

Alongside the installation, the stand hosts book presentations and signings throughout the fair, with authors including Raynal Pellicer, Luca Campigotto, Anastasia Samoylova, Diana Markosian and Clément Chéroux. On November 14, the Italian Cultural Institute in Paris will host a preview of the 2027 EXPOSED Torino Photo Festival, scheduled to take place in Turin from April through June.

Together, the stand and festival presentation introduce Paris audiences to the institutions and creative community behind Turin’s growing photography scene. The booth supplies the project’s simple premise: four frames, one small room, and a portrait that can become part of a much larger conversation.