Entering RMIT Gallery from Swanston Street, you ascend a short flight of steps and pass through the glass doors into a quiet reception area. The traffic noise fades. The air shifts. It feels as if you’ve stepped out of Melbourne’s city rush and into another world — slower, quieter, filled with memory. Here, within the calm light of the gallery, a lifetime unfolds across four-frame portraits. Each one is small. But together, they form something vast, powerful and impressive.
At Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits, showing until 16 August 2025, the late Alan Adler’s relationship with the photobooth is brought to the surface — not through grand statements, but through thousands of self-portraits taken over five decades as part of his quiet work maintaining the city’s photobooths. Most famously, Adler tended the one beneath Flinders Street Station. As part of his servicing routine, he’d test the booths using himself as the subject. These unassuming tests became a deeply human archive — accidental, yet profound.
This exhibition, developed, funded, and presented by the Centre for Contemporary Photography (CCP), is curated by photography researcher Catlin Langford, in collaboration with Jessie Norman and Christopher Sutherland of Metro Auto Photo. Presented at RMIT Gallery, it honours a life shaped not by spectacle, but by quiet service — revealing how one man, working behind the curtain, helped preserve the essence of urban photographic culture.
The exhibition layout, spanning multiple rooms of the RMIT Gallery, is understated and methodical — much like Adler himself. The walls are lined with photostrips arranged chronologically, revealing the subtle evolution of one man’s life through small changes in posture, lighting, fashion, facial hair, and time. The repetition is hypnotic. There’s no vanity in these images. No performance. Just presence.
It’s rare to witness a life so quietly, so truthfully archived. Adler wasn’t seeking self-expression. He was simply ensuring the camera worked — yet in doing so, he left us a profoundly honest visual diary.
Nearby, a series of approximately 250 unclaimed photostrips, discovered after his death, are displayed. Visitors are encouraged to examine the faces — someone might find a long-lost friend, a version of themselves, or a family member among the forgotten. It’s a delicate gesture of memory and chance, adding to the exhibition’s quietly moving atmosphere.
This is more than a memorial. Auto-Photo offers a broader reflection on photobooth culture as democratic portraiture — fleeting, affordable, and deeply embedded in urban life. The exhibition features collaborative responses from artists and collectors including Patrick Pound, Jesse Marlow, Katherine Griffiths, Mark Holsworth, and others who share their own photobooth collections, artworks, or ephemera.
One section even features a working photobooth, inviting gallery visitors to take their own portraits. In an age of over-filtered digital selfies, this analog act — slow, mechanical, unretouched — feels refreshingly authentic.
Langford, whose doctoral research focuses on photography and archives, leads the curatorial voice with a strong sense of humility and care. The gallery space is not overloaded or overdesigned. Instead, it encourages close looking — giving space for reflection and emotional connection.
Norman and Sutherland, with their deep technical knowledge and personal connection to Adler, bring warmth and insight to the show. Their roles at Metro Auto Photo, a service that continues Adler’s work maintaining photobooths around Australia, adds authenticity to the project. Together, this curatorial team balances historical depth with emotional sensitivity.
The Catalogue
An exhibition catalogue published by Perimeter Editions in partnership with the Centre for Contemporary Photography (CCP) accompanies the show, featuring new essays by:
- Catlin Langford – on Adler’s archive and the history of photobooths
- Patrick Pound – on collecting and found images
- Daniel Boetker-Smith – on automated portraiture in cultural context
The book also includes an unpublished 2023 interview with Adler, Norman and Sutherland — a rare document that captures Adler’s quiet humour and devotion to his work. For those who want to delve deeper into the material and its significance, the publication is a vital complement to the physical exhibition.
The real strength of Auto-Photo lies in its humanity. It speaks of repetition and resilience. Of working lives and overlooked legacies. Of a man who never sought recognition — and yet whose life has now come to represent something universal.
In the end, Alan Adler’s legacy isn’t in any single image. It’s in the accumulation. In the patience. In the unassuming poetry of maintenance. And in the thousands of people who once stepped behind the curtain, pressed a button, and left with a piece of themselves — not knowing who had made it possible.
Auto-Photo is not a spectacle. It is something rarer: a quiet masterpiece. Go see it.
Exhibition Details
Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits
Venue: RMIT Gallery, 344 Swanston St, Melbourne
Dates: Until 16 August 2025
Catalogue: Published by Perimeter Editions in partnership with CCP
Curators: Catlin Langford, Jessie Norman, Christopher Sutherland
Presented by: Centre for Contemporary Photography, RMIT Gallery and Metro Auto Photo
