Silver and Light

 

For the darkroom is a place of creation, a place where fantasy can be turned into fact, the real into the surreal, day into night, and winter into spring. -Anonymous

Analog photography is a medium of magic and wonder. Each step along the journey offers an opportunity to fulfill the artistic vision or take it in a completely different direction than first envisioned. It begins with medium and large format film cameras, along with a trusted 35mm or two. Once shot, the black and white negatives are developed in the studio darkroom, then printed using vintage enlargers, chemistry prepared in-house from raw materials, and carefully selected fiber-based paper, some of which expired decades ago. 

Fundamentally, photography is nothing more than the reaction of light on a silver gelatin-coated material. What you capture with that is not important. Instead of a distinct subject, the artists’ goal is to capture light, shadow, contrast, and detail. Quite often, there’s a draw toward the rusty, dusty, and old... Shannon’s Workings series explores old-time machinery of every scale, and Colleen’s Tea Time is an opportunity to showcase a collection of “cool junk.” There are also small details from everyday life that too often go unappreciated. 

Not restricted to “straight images,” the darkroom is also a place of experimentation that is only limited by imagination and provoked by the “what ifs.” Each of the studio’s less conventional series uses mixed media techniques in which shadows, chemistry, ink, and other elements coincide with historical photographic processes. Axograms are manipulated at the enlarger. The Instant Eternity prints skip cameras completely and rely on darkroom trickery, while the whimsical Chemgraphs are best described as painting with chemistry. In a more recent body of work, bromoils travel a long chemical journey in which the image totally disappears before it’s brought back to life with ink and brush. No series is ever complete, and though we won’t know until we get there, it’s always exciting to see where the road leads on this artistic journey.