Why Photobooths Are Trending Again (It Started in the 90s)

Before photobooths, there were photography studios

If you grew up in the Philippines in the 90s or early 2000s, you probably remember this: getting a family photo taken was an event. Not a casual thing. An actual, planned-in-advance event.

Photography studios were scattered across malls and commercial strips in Metro Manila. SM, Robinson's, Virra Mall, the random one near your church. You'd dress up, wait in line, sit on a stool in front of a painted backdrop, and a photographer would take maybe 10-15 exposures while telling your family to "smile natural." The whole session took 30 minutes. Picking up the prints took a week.

And it was expensive. Relative to average incomes in the late 90s and early 2000s, a studio session with a set of 4R or 5R prints could run anywhere from ₱500 to ₱2,000. That was a significant amount. So families treated it like an investment: you got one family portrait a year, maybe two. You framed it. You gave copies to relatives. It sat on the wall for years.

The point wasn't convenience. The point was that having a properly taken photograph of yourself or your family felt meaningful. It was something physical, something you could hold, something that proved a moment happened.

Then cameras got cheap and studios disappeared

By the mid-2000s, digital cameras went from luxury to commodity. The Sony Cybershot, Canon PowerShot, and eventually camera phones made it possible for anyone to take a decent photo anywhere, anytime, for free.

The photography studio business model collapsed almost overnight. Why pay ₱1,000 for a studio session when you can take 200 photos at home for nothing? The answer seemed obvious: you wouldn't.

And for a while, that was true. Studios closed. Photo printing shops shrank. The entire act of "getting a photo taken" stopped being special. It became ordinary. Background noise. Just another thing your phone does.

By the 2010s, we were taking more photos than any generation in history and printing almost none of them. The average Filipino's camera roll had thousands of images, and roughly zero of them existed as physical objects.

Something was missing (and Gen Z figured it out first)

Here's the part that caught everyone off guard: the generation that grew up entirely digital started craving something analog.

Gen Z didn't grow up going to photography studios. They didn't experience the ritual of dressing up, posing, and waiting a week for prints. But they intuitively understood something that the rest of us forgot: a photo you can hold feels different from a photo on a screen.

This is why film cameras came back. This is why Instax and Polaroid sales spiked. This is why vinyl records outsell CDs now. And this is exactly why photobooths are having a massive resurgence.

The photobooth format scratches the same itch that photography studios scratched 25 years ago, but in a way that actually fits how people live now. It's fast (3 minutes instead of 30). It's affordable (₱150 instead of ₱1,000). It's social (you do it with friends, not in front of a photographer asking you to tilt your chin). And you walk away with something physical in your hand.

Why the photobooth format specifically (and not just instant cameras)

Instax cameras and Polaroids are part of the same trend, but photobooths have something those don't: the experience itself is the attraction.

Walking into an enclosed booth with your friends, hearing the countdown, making faces at the camera, not knowing exactly how the photos will turn out, and then pulling warm strips from the printer is a different kind of moment. It's participatory in a way that snapping an Instax isn't. There's a theatrical element to it.

At bazaars and events across Metro Manila, we see this play out constantly. Groups that came for shopping end up spending 20 minutes at the photobooth. They take one session, look at the strips, laugh at the results, and get back in line to do it again. The booth becomes the thing people talk about when they leave.

That theatrical quality is also what makes photobooths work so well at private events. At a debut or birthday, the photobooth isn't just a service. It's an activity. It gives guests something to do during the inevitable lull between courses. It breaks the ice between groups that don't know each other. And it produces keepsakes that people actually keep, not files that disappear into a camera roll.

Social media made it stick

The nostalgia angle gets the trend started. Social media makes it self-sustaining.

Photo strips are genuinely photogenic objects. They look good when photographed. A strip pinned to a cork board, taped to a laptop lid, or stuck to a bedroom mirror makes for an effortlessly aesthetic Instagram story or TikTok. The physical object becomes content, which drives more people to seek out the experience, which creates more content. It's a loop.

The numbers back this up. If you search "photobooth" or "photo strips" on TikTok Philippines, you'll find thousands of videos from the last 12 months. Bazaar vendors across Metro Manila now specifically request photobooth operators because they know it drives foot traffic. Event coordinators include photobooths as standard in debut and wedding packages because they know guests expect it.

This wasn't the case even three years ago. The acceleration is real.

The format keeps evolving

What makes the current photobooth wave different from the first one (the early 2010s mall booth era) is that the format has diversified. It's not just one type of booth anymore.

There are at least 10 distinct types of photobooth operating in Metro Manila right now: enclosed vintage booths, open-air DSLR setups, 360 video rigs, glass booths, mirror booths, wide-angle 0.5 booths, roaming setups, and more. Each one serves a different type of event and a different audience.

The variety matters because it means the trend isn't dependent on a single format staying cool. When enclosed booths feel played out, 360 video booths take over. When 360 booths become expected, AI face-swap stations offer something new. The underlying desire for a photo experience with tangible output stays constant. The format just rotates.

Full circle, kind of

Photography studios in the 90s and 2000s served a specific emotional function: they made you feel like your moment was worth preserving. Worth investing in. Worth doing properly, with real lighting and a real camera and a real print you could frame.

Photobooths in 2026 serve the same function, just compressed. Faster, cheaper, more casual. But the core of it is identical. You step in front of a camera with people you care about, you get a tangible souvenir, and you walk away with proof that you were there together.

The technology changed. The prices dropped. The format shrank from a 30-minute studio session to a 3-minute booth session. But the human need driving all of it never changed at all.

That's why photobooths are trending again. And honestly, that's probably why they'll keep trending for a while.