Dolly Parton Photobooth

The museum officially debuted on September 29, 2026, inside Dolly Parton’s SongTeller Hotel in downtown Nashville. Spanning more than 20,000 square feet, it represents the largest exhibition devoted to Dolly’s life and career. Visitors can explore everything from her songwriting and touring history to her famous wardrobe and personal memorabilia.

Of course, Dolly lived much of her life in front of cameras. Carl Dean, however, famously preferred life away from the spotlight. Therefore, the newly revealed photographs provide a particularly fascinating glimpse into their relationship. The previously unseen pictures show Dolly and Carl when they were young, apparently posing together inside a photo booth. Rather than polished publicity photographs, the images capture a relaxed and playful moment between the couple. Consequently, they offer something completely different from the glamorous professional photographs most people associate with Dolly.

That difference also demonstrates exactly why photo booth photos remain so special and why we do what we do.

For more than a century, people have stepped behind a curtain, sat together and captured spontaneous moments. Unlike formal photography, a photo booth encourages people to relax. We frequently receive requests from our past customers for replacement copies of lost prints that were dear to them. Photos from our booths frequently feature at memoriam events when a family member passes because “it was the last time the family got together”. This is not an honour we have ever taken lightly.

Dolly Parton Photobooth Events

Photo booths have documented everyday life since the 1920s. Inventor Anatol Josepho introduced his automated Photomaton studio to Broadway in New York in 1926. For just 25 cents, customers received a strip of eight photographs. The idea quickly became incredibly popular, and within several years photo booths appeared around the world.

Since then, countless photo strips have found their way into wallets, handbags, drawers, scrapbooks and family albums. Most importantly, people rarely realise the significance of those photographs when they take them. A quick photo booth session might simply seem like fun at a wedding, party, shopping centre or night out. However, decades later, that little strip becomes a snapshot of hairstyles, fashion, friendships, relationships and personalities. Dolly and Carl’s photographs demonstrate this to a tee. At the time, they were simply two young people sharing a moment together. Yet decades later, those same images have become treasured pieces of cultural history.

Print the memories you want to keep

Technology has certainly changed since Anatol Josepho’s first booths appeared. Nevertheless, the reason people love photo booths hasn’t changed very much. Almost 18 years later and over 25,000 events and the joy found in our booths is just as alive as it was in 2009. Digital images can disappear into phones, cloud accounts and endless camera rolls. However, a printed photo booth strip becomes something physical. You can stick it on the fridge, place it inside an album or rediscover it decades later.

As Dolly Parton’s Life of Many Colours Museum now reminds us, sometimes the tiniest photo eventually tells the biggest story.