Not long ago, portrait studios were plentiful in malls and department stores, offering posed family photos, headshots or specialized glamour photos — often complete with matching outfits, quirky backdrops and awkward poses.
An Ontario couple is reviving that experience from yesteryear, this time, with a mobile retro portrait studio inspired by the ’80s and ’90s.
Leeanna and Aaron DiGruccio, based in Kitchener, Ont., launched M4ll Ph0t0 less than a year ago to bring back some of that nostalgia, and said the response has already been “insane”, with thousands of people — alongside their pet chickens, cats and favourite treasures — lining up for photos.
“M4ll Ph0t0, being just under a year old, is our newest venture — and the one that’s absolutely blown up for us,” said Aaron, noting they first launched in December with decades of experience in the photography industry.
The laser backgrounds and composite floating heads come carefully crafted, at a time when AI-generated ’80s-inspired portraits are spreading rapidly on social media. But these photographers pride themselves on being strictly artificial intelligence-free.
Their message, said Aaron: “Forget this AI trend. Come get your actual ’80s photo done by us.”
Now they’re popping up at markets, fairs and events across Ontario, including Punk Rock Flea Fest on Friday evening on Dundas Place in London, with more bookings in Barrie, Guelph, Kitchener, Toronto, Thunder Bay and St. Catharines over the next few months, and even requests to attend markets across the border in the U.S.
For Leeanna, starting the studio was a natural fit. She came with experience as a regional manager for portrait studios at Sears and Walmart about 15 years ago, and was there for the shock of the company going under, she said.
“I did portraits. My job was to take photos, print them, do all the poses. Everything we do now, that’s what I did in real life.”
At M4ll Ph0t0, they use the same backdrops as she did at Sears in order to “get that feel,” she said.
“You get posed exactly how Sears used to pose people. It’s truly the most authentic piece that we can we can provide,” Leeanna said.
In the age of AI, there’s an appetite for real portraits with a human connection, Aaron said.
With AI, “it is not you,” he said. “When we photograph you, that’s you.”
“It’s the dead eyes. You can tell when someone actually shoots a photo versus an image that pops up [from AI],” Leanna said. “There’s no shadows. It looks plastic.”
Their concerns with AI are more than aesthetic. They have both worked at major tech companies, and have safety concerns with uploading personal photos to AI platforms, and also worry about AI taking creative work away from the art community.
“People don’t really have the budgets anymore to hire photographers, and especially since most people now just use AI, it kind of put people like us out of jobs,” said Leeanna.
Their background in tech also inspired the name, M4ll Ph0t0, Leanna said.
When put together, the numbers are ‘400’ which is an error code for a bad request, she said. It’s also a nod to the internet of the early 2000s when it was “all the rage” to replace vowels with numbers.
Punk Rock Flea Fest runs on Dundas Place in London on Friday, Sept. 25 and Saturday, Sept. 26. Find the events M4ll Ph0t0 is heading to on their social media.
