Recreating the look of a photo from a 1980s mall studio has become a viral AI trend. But one photography duo is taking “high-quality bad photos” without AI and with a heaping serving of humor – and the response has been overwhelming.
M4LL PH0T0 (@m4llph0t0) is a pop-up photography booth visiting festivals and events and re-creating the 80s and 90s studio portraits popularized by “mall photos” like Sears.
While photographers Leeanna and Aaron DiGruccio say that M4LL PH0T0 started from boredom, the two Ontario, Canada-based photographers have more than just decades of photography experience to build on.
Leeanna DiGruccio was working for CPI in the US, the company behind store-based portrait studios inside Sears and Walmart, when the company went under. That day, she stayed for 12 hours just to make sure everyone received their photos.
Fast forward, and now asking AI to generate a photo that looks like it came from an 80s mall portrait has become a viral trend. The DiGruccios are taking those photos the traditional way, without generative AI – though the Sony A7 IV bodies and 24-70mm f/2.8 used for the portraits are far from 80s tech.
“When you use AI to generate an image, that is not that person. It's not you,” Aaron said. “We photograph you. That's the only picture like that of you that exists. It's not this amalgamation of every image that's been fed into an AI model.”
Part of M4LL PH0T0’s success comes from the experience. The duo sets up a booth at festivals and events, often punk and music festivals. The photographers joke with their portrait subjects, and at the end, guests choose from a treasure chest, like going to the dentist in the 1990s.
Everyone who walks into the M4LL PH0T0 booth at a festival gets three different photographs, all themed after the “floating head” style of photography that was popular in the 1980s: A plain background, a laser background done in Photoshop, and a surprise third set.
“We are characters. We don't take ourselves seriously,” Leeanna said. “Sometimes photography can be very serious. Everybody always says, like, "Oh, I look bad in photos." I always say back, ‘But we take them professionally.’”
“We've had people say, ‘hang on, I'm going to run home and get my cat,’ and they'd run home and come back out of breath with their cat over their shoulder for a photo with their cat in the floating head inset,” Aaron said.
He added that people have also asked to use portraits of deceased loved ones in the floating head inset, while one couple used the portraits as a pregnancy announcement. “As much as it’s a humorous premise, people have used these for actual sentimental purposes,” he said.
A typical M4LL PH0T0 portrait session takes about 90 seconds – though pets will often take longer – and costs CA$25 a person (about $18 / £13). That price point isn’t by accident – it’s also the number Leeanna found on old Sears advertisements for sitting for a session.
The couple also runs an event photography business, but M4LL PH0T0, along with being built for humor, makes real photography more accessible by running short, affordable sessions in high-traffic venues.
Adding an 80s-themed portrait booth during festivals came with unique challenges – chiefly, lighting the shot inside a small booth outdoors. The couple works from a tent with three walls in order to have the most control over the light, working with Godox V1 flashes off-camera with umbrellas.
The response to M4LL PH0T0 has been overwhelming, the couple says, with a long line to the booth at many festivals and daily messages asking what event they’ll be at next. Several guests have traveled from outside of Ontario – and even from the US – to get a photo.
In addition to working as photographers, the duo also works in tech: Aaron in IT support and Leeanna as an industrial engineer, including installing Apple devices for the Artemis II mission.
Leeanna says she’s built AI systems that ended up making her position redundant. “We’ve seen the tragic outcomes of what AI does, and we absolutely believe AI should not be in art,” Leeanna said.
“We've had people come up to us like with huge Pit Viper sunglasses and lightning bolt windbreakers be like, ‘We're ready.’ And it's like, ‘I've never met you, but you know us,’” Aaron said. “We love these little interactions. Photography is about relationships for us. It's not just get you and get you out, unless that's what you want. We are here for you.”
The name M4LL PH0T0 even has a dash of humor with its hidden Easter eggs. The numbers come from 400, the error code for a bad request, while replacing letters with numbers is part of early internet culture that Millennials – like the DiGruccios – will recognize.
M4LL PH0T0’s event schedule is available on their website.
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