Gen Zers love Korean-inspired ‘high angle’ photo booth, now going viral on TikTok

On a recent Saturday afternoon in downtown Los Angeles, seven friends – plus one dog – contorted and twisted their bodies to fit inside a brown box 2.45 metres (8 feet) tall that had a mirrored door inscribed with the words “Memory Archive”. Once they were all mostly inside, they looked up towards a Canon digital camera that was peeking out of a small hole. They posed – smiling brightly and holding the dog in the air – as the shutter clicked eight times. They then stepped out of the booth, selected their favourite shots at a kiosk and waited about a minute for the photos to develop. The group, most of whom had only met a few hours earlier at a rave, had stumbled upon the photo booth as they were grabbing food at Idyllic cafe, and decided to commemorate the moment. They gushed over the results. “This was very cute,” says Eugenia Bulah, 41. Throughout the rest of the afternoon, dozens of other people in the cafe took advantage of the “high angle” Genic photo booth, which takes pictures not from face height, but from above. Genic founders M.J. Kim and Ryan Kim, recent University of California, Los Angeles graduates, say the booth has captured nearly 1,000 photos since they installed it at Idyllic in late February. The pair, who are not related, have two other high-angle booths in the city in the US state of California, one at a cafe called About Time in Koreatown and another at the Westfield Culver City shopping centre, as well as a regular, selfie-style booth at Mi Café in Koreatown. Invented by Anatol Josepho, the first photo booth made its debut in New York in the mid-1920s. A century later, they can be found in bars, fancy hotel lobbies, coffee shops, malls and other businesses – and are often forgotten about. But these machines, much like vinyl records and disposable cameras, are experiencing something of a resurgence, particularly among the younger generations, who do not just want to snap a photo on their phone. Today’s photo booth lovers appreciate having a physical memory that they can place on their fridge, in a scrapbook or in frames. Gone are the days when technology meant grainy, low-resolution images on a photo strip – people can now take their photo booth photos from an elevated angle, which some find more flattering, employ quirky props, pick from different backgrounds and frames or pose next to their favourite K-pop artist. Other popular photo booth companies with locations throughout the US include Potobox, Life 4 Cuts and Photoism. “It’s always been a thing, but lately it’s become absolutely crazy because all the youngsters got into it and they are putting videos on Instagram and TikTok,” says Mike Rybak, 58, who has been an analogue photo booth technician and operator for more than 20 years. His company, Photo Illusion, has installed 40 booths in Los Angeles, including one at a bar that averages 2,000 photos per month. I just felt something different [whenever] I took pictures with my friends in photo booths. There was just so much laughter and we’d always get so creative with the poses M.J. Kim Rybak has also supplied influencer photographer Bryant Eslava with a vintage machine, now a series of pop-up booths known as Booth by Bryant, which has gone viral thanks to its use by celebrities like the Kardashians, rappers Jaden Smith and Lil Wayne, and more. “I think the uptrend happened right after Covid,” says Rybak. “People were locked up and nobody could go to the bars, and as soon as everything reopened, people just went crazy.” This renewed excitement surrounding photo booths is part of the reason Gen Zers and university friends M.J. and Ryan launched their company, Genic – short for “photogenic” – in April 2024. “I love taking pictures. That’s literally how it started,” says M.J., 23, who majored in data and statistics. She is the unofficial face for the brand, and many of her photos are taped onto the side of the booth for inspiration. “I just felt something different [whenever] I took pictures with my friends in photo booths,” M.J. adds. “There was just so much laughter and we’d always get so creative with the poses.” At first, M.J. and Ryan struggled to find a manufacturer that would allow them to purchase a single booth, which is all they could afford at the time. After months of hunting, they found one based in South Korea – where both of them are from – that believed in their vision and sold them a single booth for about US$20,000.. They used their savings to pay for it, then began testing the booth out in Ryan’s flat, which he shared with roommates. Inspired by the popularity of photo booths in Seoul, South Korea – where booths can be found on just about every corner in the city’s busiest district, Hongdae – M.J. and Ryan wanted to create a booth that took photos from above, to inspire people to “always dream high and look up”. “Photo booths are so big in South Korea,” says Ryan, who majored in design. “It’s really a culture. It’s a lifestyle for people. But we didn’t want to just bring that industry to the US, because the branding is a little bit different, and we wanted to really resonate with the whole US market rather than just Asian-American in the US. So we tried different branding. Something that’s a little cooler.” With Genic, they wanted to establish a recognisable, creative lifestyle brand, Ryan adds. Once the duo nailed the mechanics and design for their first photo booth, they started asking businesses near their university if they could install it there, free of charge. M.J. and Ryan designed their booth to feel like an experience, and like you are shooting for the cover of a magazine. First, you select which type of frame you want at the kiosk machine: the original, which looks like a traditional photo strip and costs US$10 for two prints, or the signature frame, which mimics a fashion editorial with one large image or three photos and costs US$12 for two prints. The photos have a QR code at the bottom, so you can download high-quality, digital versions of your photos as well as a live video of you using the booth. Back at Idyllic, M.J. and Ryan, who visit their photo booths daily to ensure that they are working properly, watched as people hopped in and out of the machine. Among the crowd were friends Cassandra Leviste, 22, and Stacy Salazar, 20, who visited the cafe specifically to check out the Genic booth, which they said had been popping up on their “For You” page on TikTok for weeks. “It’s not really a common angle for a photo booth, so before we [came], we were looking at inspo photos on Pinterest,” says Leviste, 22. “We were serious.” They agreed on their poses ahead of time and coordinated their outfits. Leviste says she loves photo booths because they are a convenient way to capture memories with her loved ones without having to ask someone else to take a photo of them. “I’ve been to so many photo booths that I’m running out of space on my bulletin board,” she says, laughing.

Gen Zers love Korean-inspired ‘high angle’ photo booth, now going viral on TikTok

Two university graduates, inspired by how photo booths are ‘a lifestyle for people’ in Korea, have created a ‘high angle’ booth in LA