Mourning darkroom's demise (article)

<p>SF Chron article from today:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/05/10/NS5U1OCE80.DTL">http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/05/10/NS5U1OCE80.DTL</a></p>

<p>snip: "<em>Eric William Carroll is mourning the death of the darkroom.</em><br>

<em>Carroll, the recipient of the 2012 Baum Award for an Emerging American Photographer, is using his new show at SF Camerawork to pay homage to his favorite space. The centerpiece of the show is called 'This Darkroom's Gone to Heaven,' a full-size group darkroom in which white shadows replace equipment and intellectual discourse will replace photographic development. It will host meetings of guest photographers talking about dead photographers and dead techniques.</em><br>

<em>Beyond the familiar nostalgia for the amber light and the noxious scent of sulfur dioxide, Carroll pines the loss of the darkroom on a more human level."</em></p>

<p>Personally, I don't know what it all means but it's pretty well said and written. I worked in my own small personal B&W & color darkroom in the '70s I sure don't miss it except for pure nostalgia. Color prints were a <strong>huge</strong> challenge for me.</p>

<p>I don't see the point in mourning over something you can still have.</p>

<p>The word "cloying" comes to mind.</p>

<p>I think the real world is now full of cameras, many operated by people who weren't interested in learning to shoot film. Too expensive. Too frustrating. With the digicam revolution everyone can take a picture and if they don't like it, delete, try again, instantly. Darkroom skill takes time to learn and has no instant feedback. While those who did invest the time, effort and money into learning film are now comfortable with it, few newcomers are willing to expend that much energy. Why mess with chemicals in the dark when you can sit in a comfy chair and move a mouse?</p>

<p>It's like the guys who build hot rods versus the guys who buy a hot rod to be a hot rodder. One type paid its dues, the other type paid their money. It doesn't really matter; the general public can't tell a hot rod buyer from a hot rod builder.</p>

<p>I dig the art installation approach. Wish I could see it in person.</p>

<p>Might have been better if Carroll had just let the piece speak for itself rather than getting bogged down in a digression about a bygone era. That's an argument in favor of leaving interpretations of art to critics.</p>

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<p>It's like the guys who build hot rods versus the guys who buy a hot rod to be a hot rodder. One type paid its dues, the other type paid their money.</p>

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<p>This would be analogous if it were about people buying photos versus photographers making photos. Its not relevant to photographers using different methods which the paragraph prompting the purported analogy concerned. It does serve its ultimate underlying objective however. A thinly veiled swipe at other people for allegedly having not 'paid their dues'.</p>

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<p> I had a small darkroom in the 70's but it was expensive and I had other things I wanted to do so I sold the stuff and started shooting Kodachrome for a number of years. A person just goes along with what they want or need to do. My goals in life were on a different course and photography always remained down the list of things I was interested in. It's still a hobby but as always it's never been my main interest. However tomorrow is a photography day. I live reasonably close to Yosemite so my wife and I are going to drive over for the day. I was going to walk over to Mirror Lake and hang out over there and see what kind of images I might find. I will be shooting my F100 tomorrow. In the afternoon we will find some other area to hang out. </p>

<p>I am not a professional and will not weigh in with a conclusion. I do think of photography as art, however, and as such, related to my other avocation, music. To me, the film/digital experience is somewhat like the electronic/acoustical experience. If you just look at it from the listener's point of view, then you miss an entire dimension. A listener may not know a Hammond B-3 from a good sample on a synthesizer - or a Yamaha stage piano from a Yamaha grand. But there is a difference, most definitely from the artist's range of choices and inspiration, and I do not mean to say that the choice is "better" one way or the other. It's just different. Perhaps film and digital are just different that way too, and the darkroom experience (romantic but unknown to me) may be a part of the difference. </p>

<p>I once wrote a small tongue-in-cheek essay on how each photographic innovation leaves behind "purists" who resist change.<br>

I had so much fun writing it, I have to post it here!</p>

<p>" Imagine Alexander, a whiskered American Civil War photographer. He is sitting in his covered wagon, preparing his wet collodion glass slides. He is muttering and cursing to himself as he drips sliver nitrate onto his stained apron. Outside his wagon, the explosive hammering of a Gatling gun rattles his nerves as he rushes to finish the developing process in the scant 10-minute time frame.</p>

<p>Alexander is proud of his skill and feels vastly advanced over those his of colleagues who are reluctant to embrace state-of-the-art technology. He alternately scoffs at and pities those poor auld sods who are still holding their daguerreotypes over warm cups of mercury to develop images on the silver plates they polish with such effort.</p>

<p>He knows they cannot make multiple images the way he can on albumen paper. Alexander is aware they hold his equipment and skill set in disdain, but he dismisses their claim he is only making "copies" of his photos. Of course theirs cannot be reproduced, but that does not make every one of their daguerreotypes a unique piece of art.</p>

<p>Sitting in his Conestoga in the thick pungent reek of the bromide solution he has carefully prepared, and exercising his skill in precipitating silver salts, Alexander shakes his head at the old-fashioned notions of his colleagues.</p>

<p>He feels they are as wrong-minded as those who embrace the new-fangled, unproven, sissified process of suspending those salts in an emulsion to make exposure and developing quicker and more even. He reaches carefully for his pyroxylin and ether, knowing what precision he must exercise in preparing a new slide.</p>

<p>He feels pride and satisfaction in his expert knowledge, and snorts to himself at the notion that these ridiculous Ambrotypes will ever be considered real photographs."</p>

 

<p>Excellent, Warren! It just needs a followup to cover when those newfangled gelatin silver prints came along and allowed anyone to call himself a photographer, diminishing the entire craft for the real photographers.</p>

<p>Did all of the enlargers in the world suddenly disappear? I agree with Steve Smith....the darkroom is still a avenue available to those who take pictures. I have a small darkroom that I set up and dismantle every printing session in a friends garage. There is still a wide range of films and papers to choose from. Rodinal is still around (since the late 1800's) as is D-76 and Dektol. With 2nd hand darkroom items going for a song (sometimes even free) there is no reason for someone not to have a darkroom if they really want it. Personally, I like the darkroom. I like the fact that my photographs were produced by me by hand. Call me a nostalgic elitist but a hand made darkroom print made by the photographer earns more respect from me then a inkjet print. Just my $.02. BTW, up until recently, I used to use a darkroom in a local city college. I must say that despite the gloom and doom forecast on the death of the darkroom, this large, well equipped darkroom was filled to capacity most days I went in to print. While not every student there would go on to make their own darkroom, I'm sure there are some (like myself when I first learned the darkroom in 2005) that will.</p>

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<p>I do think of photography as art</p>

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<p>It's not art. It's a medium which can be used to create art - just as painting and sculpture are mediums and not art in themselves.</p>

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<p>This would be analogous if it were about people buying photos versus photographers making photos. Its not relevant to photographers using different methods which the paragraph prompting the purported analogy concerned. It does serve its ultimate underlying objective however. A thinly veiled swipe at other people for allegedly having not 'paid their dues'.</p>

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<p>You can buy a hot rod and drive it real fast around town without knowing the first thing about engines or spark plugs. Same thing with digital cameras. The point is you don't have to learn anything to get the end results. The car builder, like the film photographer, knows how the insides work because they have 'paid their dues' - they've sucked at it long enough that they went and studied it. It's only considered a swipe by those in the position of buying the hot rod.</p>

Quote:"'This Darkroom's Gone to Heaven"

 

 

The article (which I don't read) seems to be about ONE certain darkroom and that is fine. It is just like some of us is mourning for the death of his(her) grandpa. That doesn't mean all grandpa are dead now

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<p>While those who did invest the time, effort and money into learning film are now comfortable with it, few newcomers are willing to expend that much energy. Why mess with chemicals in the dark when you can sit in a comfy chair and move a mouse?</p>

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<p>Learning Photoshop is orders of magnitude more difficult than learning film darkroom. I have done both.</p>

<p>I find many more people are willing to take the time to learn digital darkroom skills than were willing to do the same with a film darkroom some 40 years ago when I set up my first darkroom.</p>

<p>Most film photographers have no clue in the processes of film development. They drop their film off to have it developed and prints made. That hasn't change since Kodak advertised "You take the pictures, we do the rest".</p>

<p> </p>

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<p>The point is you don't have to learn anything to get the end results.</p>

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<p>This is either the result of profound ignorance or just made up for the mere sake of insulting others. It has no merit whatsoever.</p>

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<p>This is either the result of profound ignorance or just made up for the mere sake of insulting others. It has no merit whatsoever.</p>

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<p>Now that's an insult. I won't claim your comment is without merit though. If you truly think that buying a car requires the same level of learning that building one does, you're just going to be that ignorant forever.</p>

<p>Very few film users make their own film or their film cameras.</p>

<p>Your analogy fails at all levels.</p>

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<p>Very few film users make their own film or their film cameras. Your analogy fails at all levels.</p>

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<p>Even if film users usually did all that, comparing a buyer of a product to the maker is not analogous to makers using two different methods.</p>

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<p>If you truly think that buying a car requires the same level of learning that building one does, you're just going to be that ignorant forever.</p>

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<p>Um, I never said anything even remotely like that. I explained, in simple plain language, that the analogy was not applicable as a comparison of film shooters and digital shooters but that it was to photograph buyers and photographers. I also correctly rejected the related claim that digital shooters "don't have to learn anything to get the end results" while film shooters do. </p>

<p>I believe those who look at an early contact print from a paper negative in a museum will be in awe and run out and by a set of assorted PS plug-ins and be very pleased with their hobby. </p>

<p>So when I retired in 1997 I had my contractor build me a dark room and studio. I went into the photo business quite by accident after having been hired by a newspaper to do pictures. It was a weekly and had two photographers me and the woman who developed the TMax we shot. The newspaper darkroom was in a closet under a stairway and I think that poor woman ruined her lungs in that little darkroom developing the thirty or forty rolls of TMax that we shot. It was probably more than that because I wasted a lot of film shooting local sports. I had some ventilation in my home darkroom. At first I liked it Then I started doing weddings. I sent out the color but I did all the black and white and a couple of color enlargements I did for my customers after each wedding. RA4. I now can do in seconds digitally that took me a lot of time for my color because if I got the color balance wrong I had to change filters to get the green or whatever out of the print and I had to do it over. A pain. To make a long story short I grew to hate the goddam darkroom particularly if I had to develop the weeks newspaper because she was off. That meant processing forty or so rolls of film by hand then making contacts for the editor who would then select the ones for the paper and sent the contacts back to be printed for layup. I took the papers work home because the papers darkroom was nasty. I used to choke on a well known color develoment process for doing chromes. I never want to be in another darkroom breathing fumes again.</p>

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<p>The point is you don't have to learn anything to get the end results</p>

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<p>that depends on the end results you will be satisfied with and let's face it, most people are easily satisfied. I've had a well equiped and large darkroom for many years and not only printed for myself but also for others. I loved it. How much? So much that would I ever have to choose between photographing and working on photos (from negatives or digital files nowadays) I'm not sure I would go on shooting. When I moved house six years ago I pondered for some time if I would setup my darkroom again because I had the square meters to do so but in the end decided against it. Now almost all is done behind my computer and I have never looked back other than on a abstract level.</p>

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<p>Learning Photoshop is orders of magnitude more difficult than learning film darkroom.</p>

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<p>I have done both. Neither is more difficult than the other but if you want to get top results you have to invest in learning the skills, both theoretically and practically understanding and mastering every step of the process. There are no shortcuts.<br>

When learning the Zone system for example we had to shoot a "white on white" in the studio with ten zones (to be measured densitometrically). It took me three months to get it right consistently. Since then I can do it with one arm tied behind my back as it were. Still, getting the best possible result is never an automatic thing, it takes some serious work and you keep on learning as you go along. Digital I did it all myself and frankly the same applies here as well. There is never any routine in getting best possible results.</p>

 

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<p>because they have 'paid their dues'</p>

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<p>I know a lot of people who "paid their dues" within the context you describe and still suck at it. Does it help in a photographic sense to pay ones dues? Yes, it helps but it is still no guarantee.</p>

<p>Met a guy this weekend that makes paper negs with <em>macgyvered</em> pinhole cameras. Couldn't get much more paleo-photographic than that! Seeing the work, I'm getting the makeshift, darkroom-in-bathroom itch for the first time in years. I kind of like the idea of a Mentos tin and a packet of RC paper. Maybe I just need a sweat lodge purification session to atone for my PS plugin blasphemy.<br>

His work: http://mysite.verizon.net/vze337hi/photographs.html</p>

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<p>I'm getting the makeshift, darkroom-in-bathroom itch for the first time in years</p>

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<p>never hurts to follow your feeling. Well, at least not in this case.</p>