CLAREMONT, CA.- The Claremont Museum of Art first brought the interactive photography project PhotoBooth to the community of Claremont, California, on October 19, 2007, when San Francisco-based photographer Christopher Irion set up shop outside the library and photographed community members who ventured inside his portable photo booth. The resulting 214 images will be unveiled on a 72-foot-wide and eight-foot-tall mural at the College Heights Lemon Packing House on Saturday, December 1.

The mural will be located outside in the packinghouse’s east plaza at West First Street and Oberlin Avenue, and is free and open to the public. The installation will be on view at least through January 1, possibly longer, depending upon the weather.

The photos—black-and-white and against a stark white background—are striking and intimate. “Because people can’t see the photographer while they’re in the booth, I think I can create images that have an intimate quality,” Irion says. “People have to approach it with a certain amount of spontaneity and openness, and I think that’s what often shows up in the image. They’re experiencing a private moment inside, so portrait viewers get to see these intimate looks into people, versus what they’d see if they passed them on the street.”

Irion says people seem to love the idea of taking a photo with someone else, whether it’s their spouse, child, coworker, or pet. “And sometimes what you get is not only a portrait of two people but of the relationship between the two people,” he says. “For example, in Claremont, I shot several portraits of older couples that clearly have very strong relationships. The resulting images are incredibly touching.”

How PhotoBooth Works - Irion thought up PhotoBooth in 2003 as a way to document communities across the United States by creating a public photomural of people in the community. The images, each usually 16” x 24”, are digitally printed on rolls of paper so they can be hung like wallpaper onto one contiguous surface. Surfaces have included everything from an interior wall of a San Francisco coffee shop to a large wooden wall constructed in an open space in the small town of Putney, Vermont.

The PhotoBooth studio is portable and lightweight, which has allowed Irion to travel more than 8,000 miles and make more than 2,000 portraits across America in communities that include San Francisco; Silver City, New Mexico; Putney, Vermont; Providence, Rhode Island; New York City; and a cross-country trip that included several different cities and states.

He has three requirements for every project: the photography must take place in a location that is a gathering spot or crossroads of that community; every person who is photographed is included in the installation; and the installation is located in a frequented community spot with pedestrian access, rather than a place apart such as an art gallery.

Irion sets up the booth in a very public place, and community members who happen to walk by and wish to participate are in the booth for less than a minute. As a way of recognizing the collaboration with each participant, everyone is sent a complimentary 5” x 7” print.

More than anything, Irion is motivated by the concept of community. “I am interested in strengthening the ties of a community by showing the group back to itself in a direct and democratic fashion, with the idea that viewers can directly gaze at the faces of fellow citizens and have a moment to reflect on their relationship to one another with the hope that we might see each other in a fresh and less judgmental way. The installation functions as a place to meet one’s neighbors as a town green might once have allowed, so as to share with others the gaze of the community.”

The Claremont Museum of Art’s PhotoBooth project is supported by The James Irvine Foundation and the City of Claremont.