Couple Used a Photo Booth to Capture Their Love Story, Then Opened a Viral Photo Booth of Their Own

Love didn’t just spark for Zoë Lazerson and Brandon Minton — it developed, frame by frame, in an analog photo booth at a Utah dive bar.

The couple, now 28 and 26, first met over a game of pool in 2022. Around the time their go-to spot installed a classic photo booth, their early hangouts gained a new ritual.

“We started using that photo booth every time we went back there,” Lazerson says.

When they moved to New York City in 2023, the idea followed them. By June 2024, they opened Old Friend Photobooth on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. A second spot in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, arrived two months later.

Both Lazerson and Minton came into the project with media chops. He had worked in production at a film lab, while she’d spent more than a decade building her career as an influencer. But they wanted something that felt less virtual and more human.

“We both really wanted something that brought people together in that brick-and-mortar way — where you go to experience something,” Lazerson explains. “And with Old Friend, you’re actually taking something away with you.”

Photo booths have been around for a century, dating back to 1925 when inventor Anatol Josepho introduced the first automatic booth in New York City. Even in a world of instant phone cameras and endless filters, the old-school setup still hits differently. Old Friend’s booths deliver four flashes and four photos in about three minutes — simple, quick, and intentionally imperfect.

“A lot of people feel nostalgic for photo booths they’ve never even experienced,” Lazerson says.

Minton thinks that’s part of the magic. Unlike a selfie you can retake a hundred times, a booth strip forces you to live with the moment you capture.

“You don’t really know what you’re gonna look like until after,” he says. “It sticks in your brain longer than something you scroll past online.”

Since opening, the booths have become mini-stages for everyday milestones. Lazerson says she’s watched people step inside to celebrate everything from birthdays to weddings to baby announcements.

“Mom visiting in the city, or they just got married and are coming from City Hall; their birthday; they’re announcing their pregnancy — all of it,” she says.

For the business’s one-year anniversary, the couple even flew in a pair of longtime sweethearts from Texas as giveaway winners. During the trip, they got engaged — and came straight to Old Friend to document it in four little frames.

The concept was inspired less by American bar booths and more by the street-accessible photo kiosks the couple saw while living in Paris and traveling through Europe.

“It was important that anyone, any age, at any time of day, could use it,” Minton says. “We didn’t want restrictions.”

Old Friend Photobooth now operates daily from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. at 145 Allen Street in Manhattan and 243 Berry Street in Brooklyn — offering the same simple promise that started their story: step inside, press the button, and walk out with something real.