How (And Why) To Develop Photos in a Darkroom

Rosondunnii: When I think about the generational love for photography, it started with my aunt Ella May. She had her house full of photos of her children, of her family members. Growing up and seeing that, it was something that really resonated because as I got older, I realized a lot of people don’t have family photos. They don’t have those stories, they don’t have this connection to their ancestors in that way. So, for me it started there. This space is the Tuley Park Cultural Center. It is a historical space full of amenities on the South Side of Chicago in Chatham. We are in the photography space, and so here we have a full studio. We have libraries of different work from Aperture Magazines, to the Gordon Parks Foundation mini library. A whole range of artists being showcased. For a lot of us we’ve been told, like “hey, you can’t do art. It’s not available, it’s not here,” and so we brought it here through this space. A darkroom is exactly what it sounds like, it’s a dark space. The darkroom we’re in is all painted black. There’s usually no means of light that comes in. Any light exposure to the film or even the paper will expose it and it will ruin what you’re trying to make and what you’re trying to print. In our darkroom we use red lights because that range of light is pretty safe and neutral enough for you to be able to pull out your light-sensitive photo paper, and then make the enlargement which is what you typically need the darkroom for.

We have loaded our film into a carrier. If I get it to a space where I think “oh, that’s good focus,” I’m gonna use this grain finder. I am making sure there’s the right amount of grain that I’m desiring and wanting. I’m going to double check my aperture, and from there we have the image that we want to print. And now we’re going to load it into our easel. And then from the easel we’re going to set our timer here. So we’re going to start off, do it three seconds. We’ll take the photo out of that easel. We’ll put it into our chemical, and then we’ll start agitating it. When you first take a photo, there’s different chemicals that are on that film: silver halide crystals. Once that’s exposed to developer, which is the first chemical we use, those crystals then start to change and that photo starts to then be exposed. We then use a stop chemical that tells those crystals to stop so it doesn’t get too dark; they don’t go too big and enlarge so that that focal can actually be in range and in focus for you to be able to view it. After that we then use a third chemical that’s called fixer, and that fixer basically balances out the photo. So, for me, I like to think about it like it’s contrasting it. It’s making sure your blacks are black, your whites are white. And then afterwards we put it in a water rinse to rinse all those chemicals off. But once you really get the science down, you kind of sort of can get the photos to come out exactly how you want. And then once we dry it it’s done.

Folks are coming back to photography and analog photography specifically. I think they need to disconnect to reconnect. We live in such a fast world, and so I really think folks want to slow down. You have to listen: listen to the camera, the rewind, the levers, you gotta listen when you’re doing the agitation. You have the autonomy to decide what you want to contrast, how much time you’re exposing. It’s so many little microdecisions that go into the artwork. It’s you: it’s you in the paper, it’s you in the enlarger, it’s you in that film. And I think that’s something that is so priceless right now.

Essence: I actually started my photography practice with digital photography, and since partaking in The Darkroom Chicago I’ve been so lucky and grateful to be able to learn about the beautiful medium of film photography. I think when you have rolls of film with a certain number of images you really start to think about what’s the priority here? Rather than just shooting and editing and pulling hundreds of images, you normally only have about 20 to 30 shots, and so I really think it’s trained my eye and my mind to think “what’s important in this moment now, what story am I trying to tell?”

Rosondunnii: A year ago we met this space and it was a basement. And we had learned that over time different photographers in the community would come here, they would work, they would steward the space. That collective responsibility, how do we continue the traditions of our generations and those who come before us? I recently learned since being here that there was a film lab that was owned by Black folks on 87th and Kenwood. It was called Photo Cell, and we had 5 of the 6 staff members from Photo Cell here in this space. And they shared about running a Black-owned film lab on the South Side of Chicago, back in the 70’s and 80’s. And I tried to look it up, I tried to Google, and there was nothing to be found. There is no other knowledge or source of that information besides those living individuals. When there is nothing to be found, we think that something doesn’t exist. And so I think for us, making those connections, realizing it’s about film photography but it’s not about film photography. It’s about our community, it’s about our legacy, it’s about honoring those who come before us, and it’s about continuing to learn. Especially about these analog practices that folks are believing are dying, but we’re still here keeping them alive.