PART 1 - PROJECT 1 - RESEARCH POINT

From Spiridione Grossi to Anatol Marco Josepho

I based my research on the site 

https://www.photohistory/sussex.co.uk/AutoPortraitsDudkin.htm (accessed on 01/11/2018).

Spiridione Grossi (1877-1921) was the eldest son of an Austrian born professional photographer, established in Liverpool. He and his sister became photographers as well.

In 1907 Grossi opened his own photographic portrait studio in Liverpool, then moved to Manchester first and Brighton then, in 1910. 

https://www.photohistory/sussex.co.uk/AutoPortraitsDudkin.htm (accessed on 01/11/2018).

He traded under the name of 'The Sticky Back & Post Card Studio'. 'Post Card' were small enough to be sent through the post while "Sticky Backs" were smaller: they were called 'Sticky' because they were coated with a gum, in order to make them adhesive. The Sticky Back were the outcome of Grossi's invention: the apparatus for producing "automatic photograpics portraits" on a strip of photo sensitive paper. 

https://www.photohistory/sussex.co.uk/AutoPortraitsDudkin.htm (accessed on 01/11/2018).

It can be said that the automated portrait's era had started.

In 1911 Abraham Dudkin purchased the Studio from Spiridione Grossi and, in 1918, sold the rights of the "Sticky Back" process to Gregory Wisnhniak, an American/Russian businessman established in San Francisco, California. 

The nephew of a worker in Gregory Wisnhiak's San Francisco Studio (but somebody says he was the nephew  of Abraham Dudkin's aunt), Anatol Josepho, strongly interested in the "Sticky Back" process,  in 1925 developed the popular "Photomaton". 

Josepho had drawn up plans for the "Photomaton" already in 1921, but he did not complete his project until he visited the Gregory Wisnhiak's "Sticky Back" photographic studio in San Francisco, in 1923 and saw the the entire process.

from google image search