Darkroom

"In the end, it isn't nature that one responds to in this work so much as the craft of the darkroom, and this response only reinforces one's feeling that nature, in this case, is somehow being "used"-that it may be only another resource exploited in the interests of a technological feat" (Richard B. K. McLanathan, Gene Brown).

"Only the camera is allowed to pass into paradise in order to bring back evidence of its superior attributes-superior precisely because of their untouched purity and their distance from the dead hand of human intervention" (Richard B. K. McLanathan, Gene Brown).

McLanathan, Richard B. K., and Gene Brown. The Arts. New York: Arno, 1978. Print.


This post is in reference to my last meeting. We had talked about working in the darkroom for awhile and I'm finally starting to get everything together to make that happen. What I had been doing last semester with the homemade paper was my way of being able to do more than just take an image. I've always been really interested in painting and knitting and other hand crafts. I like being able to work with my hands and make something happen. I love photography but sometimes I want more. I haven't worked in the darkroom in a long time, besides processing film occasionally. I'm excited to get back in the darkroom, mixing chemicals and messing around with my paper. The darkroom is such a sacred place to me. It's more to me than just being in the dark, printing images. I enjoy touching the paper, smelling chemicals, feeling the air from the ventilation shafts. It's all part of an experience, one that I think ties into my work and the whole experience that my images give me.