For this assignment photographer Yale Joel set up a trick mirror in Times Square Theatre in 1946. It looked like an ordinary mirror to members of the public, but Joel was able to photograph those people through the glass. He captured a section of the New York community at their most informal, attending to items of personal grooming. Adjusting hats, stockings and hair, inspecting zits, teeth and noses.

Joel excelled at assignments that involved special effects, unusual equipment and carefully staged situations. His photography was described as "imaginative with a whimsical flair for humor" and he developed a reputation as the "photographer of the impossible."

Yale Joel was born in 1919 in the Bronx, New York. His father gave him a Kodak Brownie camera when he was a teenager. He started taking photographs, and continued for the next 70 years. Joel twice won the “Magazine Photographer of the Year” award from the University of Missouri School of Journalism, plus numerous other recognitions.

Scroll to the bottom to see what the trick photo booth looked like from the outside.



