Tom's One Hour Photo

Art by Yelizaveta Rogulina

Scrolling through the Instagram page for Tom’s One Hour Photo Studio & Lab in Los Angeles, you’ll see soft-focus portraits of people posing with plastic Greek columns and bouquets of faux roses. Folks from Gen X to Gen Z are flocking to 60-year-old Tom Tuong’s studio to get pictures in front of airbrushed butterflies and clouds. The photos are reminiscent of a past era when teenagers would go to the mall, have a fun photoshoot with friends, and share wallet-size prints with each other. Many of Tuong’s patrons pay homage to this time period, wearing ‘90s-inspired slip dresses and dreamy Y2K hair clips. 

Tom’s experienced a major revival after country popstar Kacey Musgraves visited the shop in August. Prior to Musgraves’ visit, Tuong’s business was struggling. Now, appointments at his studio are booked months in advance, and Tuong’s services have been featured at events for Playboy and Reformation. His studio has also been visited by celebrity clientele like Busy Philipps and Colton Haynes.

Tuong’s shop is one of the last of its kind in the country. Tom’s is one of only 121 remaining one-hour photo studios, according to the most recent data from the United States Census Bureau. This type of business came to prominence in the late 1980s and grew to 3,066 stores by 1998. They provided convenient, fast film development and printing for everyday consumers. With the decline of film and the increased access to digital photography, one-hour photo shops quickly disappeared. Despite the hype that Tom’s received, most people aren’t really going out to get their portraits printed the way they used to. In some ways, that is a good thing.

“Photo studios used to make their money by holding on to the negatives, and they would sell people back the prints. Now you can have a good camera, take a picture, and even with a regular inkjet printer, you can make a pretty good print yourself,” says Betsy Schneider, a photographer and visual and media arts professor at Emerson College.

Schneider says that the purpose of photo studios was to process images for people who did not have access to darkrooms. With the onset of smartphones and digital imaging, both the camera and the roll are readily available at all times. There is no need for a service like Tuong’s to exist anymore. Still, there is an element of magic in Tuong’s portrait sessions and prints that is unparalleled in the age of iPhone photography. 

“I do think there's a richer experience in going to an event and having your picture taken. I think that there is value in experiencing something more slowly, like having a really good meal,” says Schneider.

As Tuong’s photos made rounds on social media, I began thinking about the wallet-sized studio portraits I’ve collected and given out over the years. While many of us may be too young to have experienced photo studios like Tom’s, we can remember sitting down for a portrait and giving those photos to our loved ones. There’s a certain cheesiness to studio photography sessions that takes us back to simpler times. Whether it was our proms or senior portraits, we have all dressed up and smiled for a photographer with a big umbrella light. There was something particularly endearing about collecting mini mementos of our friends. Much like a yearbook, the little notes on the backs of these wallet-sized prints served as snapshots into our lives at the time— who we hung out with, who we fell in love with, and who mattered to us. 

This feeling I had after seeing Tuong’s photos captures the biggest draw of Tom’s One Hour Photos— the nostalgia factor. The aesthetic that Tuong presents is campy and old-school. It makes Gen Xers want to relive an experience, and it allows Zoomers to experience a time period that they were too young for. Schneider believes that photography is an inherently nostalgic art form because it is centered around capturing a moment from the past. Experiences that appeal to our senses of nostalgia, according to Schneider, are short-lived and fleeting. However, they can also give us the opportunity to look directly at the past and try to understand why it impacts us today.

“I think the world has changed in such a way, especially in photography and this loss of physicality, that there's something real about trying to have a physical experience,” says Schneider.

Only time will tell if the boom in Tom’s business is just a fad. However, the popularity of his photos serves as a reminder of our past and the pasts we weren’t around for, and why they matter to us now.