A little bit wet..

The thought of spending time in a wet smelly cave with only a red light to guide you has little appeal these days. But that was black and white for me back in a time when I printed black and white images to make a living. We can fool ourselves into thinking that the good old days of black and white were somehow better; that the feel of a hand print, the smell of the chemicals, and the cosy red light, were somehow romantic and fulfilling. But this is nothing but pure nostalgia.

I did have a brief rebirth of the wet darkroom a few years ago when it became a bit of a retreat from students, but even then, the enjoyment of solitude did not last long after working on a single print for an hour only to turn on the light and realizing it was a nice print, but a terrible image not worth the costly en devour. Add to that, the efforts of maintaining an archival print standard are almost impossible in a communal darkroom, (or even a professional one), the high cost of papers where all the good stuff has been taken out, the breathing in of chemical vapors etc, well, there really isn’t any reason to go back to the old ways. Having said that, I always keep my dodging tools just in case I forget..