Inspiration for building Darkrooms, Alt and Silver and Hybrid

Hi All

I just saw the thread about the Duluth Photographers building a darkroom here on APUG and it got me motivated and inspired.

I am thinking about a retirement project where I build a super darkroom facility - that houses all my equipment plus artist in residence facility or visiting client facility to spend time working
on significant projects. This would include all my equipment which frankly is significant and totally usable for the next 30 years at least.
I am looking at an area of Ontario where I can hunker down with my family and keep working until I cannot stand any more- I will make sure my sinks are low and the facility is on one floor, because
I can use a little scooter to get around when nature starts calling me home.


I have never approached any institution, Private or Public for money and I actually not considered an idea of Kick starter, but would not rule it out.
I think due to the historic nature of what we do, and the plain FACT that what we do is becoming less in vogue. I would like to put together a plan to
approach public and private institutions to help me financially realize a dream of providing a world class environment for historic process that mimics what I am already
interested in and as well a place where younger photographers want to work on long term projects.
This would include film process, printing - digital, mounting and framing options where someone could visit, live comfortably for a period, produce a compete show and move on.

I would like to here of any projects, facility's , art groups that have taken similar paths and use their story's to help me sell mine. Self serving - you betcha. All ideas , concepts
will help me in preparing my plan, location world wide is really appreciated.

thanks

Bob

doesn't sound like retirement to me

Photography consumes me , not a hobby but my life , not a bad way to go btw I have met and seen quite a diverse interesting group. Next 20 years will be more interesting I just need to keep healthy.

RobC said:

doesn't sound like retirement to me

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Wonderful idea Bob - and a great testament to your enthusiasm and generosity. Wish there was something similar in my neck of the woods! Best of luck with your efforts to get this moving...

Hi Bob,

I've daydreamed about setting up a space in Hamilton. It would have been great to do it 6 years ago, when the real estate market was more viable, but it's still a lot more enticing than trying to set anything up in Toronto.

As you know, I work out of Gallery 44, which is an amazing facility. I often find myself thinking about how they ever got the thing off the ground, you know? I think they had their 30th anniversary recently. There was some real initiative at one point, particularly when you look at what it has become.

I don't know if you're familiar with Rayko out in San Francisco, or Lightwork in Syracuse? I'm sure you could glean some ideas from them.

As always, good luck!

RobC said:

doesn't sound like retirement to me

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Which means you will live longer and have more living in your life.

Marco Buonocore said:

I don't know if you're familiar with Rayko out in San Francisco...

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I also thought that was potentially a good model for what it sounds like what Bob is trying to get done.

Although not on the major upswing we would like as artists and photographers; we will continue to see a resurgence of darkrooms in the coming years.
people will always want to get their hands dirty and the darkroom is a great place to do it. someone/somebody is buying up all that equipment on ebay.
there are many other places doing creative workshops all over the world. art intersection is a great resource in Gilbert AZ. there's even a gentleman in Poland teaching wetplate and other alt processes. I'm looking forward to taking a class in wet plate negative in NYC at the Penumbra foundation.
Yes Bob just go for it!!
Best, Peter

Marco

You and other young printers that I know are the people I am thinking about. We will be in touch, I love G44 and its facilities, world class and run by some
pretty fine people.

I am not thinking of duplicating that idea -- probably more hard core where people can come in and basically over a visit bang out a complete show, with or without help.

Bob

Marco Buonocore said:

Hi Bob,

I've daydreamed about setting up a space in Hamilton. It would have been great to do it 6 years ago, when the real estate market was more viable, but it's still a lot more enticing than trying to set anything up in Toronto.

As you know, I work out of Gallery 44, which is an amazing facility. I often find myself thinking about how they ever got the thing off the ground, you know? I think they had their 30th anniversary recently. There was some real initiative at one point, particularly when you look at what it has become.

I don't know if you're familiar with Rayko out in San Francisco, or Lightwork in Syracuse? I'm sure you could glean some ideas from them.

As always, good luck!

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Well...well..
It so happens that I have been thinking (daydreaming) about this sort of arrangement also - perhaps on a smaller scale. Real-estate prices being outrageous in my area (Astoria, NYC) makes it all the more difficult to realize such a project and to keep it alive - it would need a small group of people who are committed and passionate about it. Some sort of crowd-funding would probably be necessary (I have seen one fail).

Bob - thank you for starting this thread - I hope it will encourage people to chime in with their ideas, suggestions and experiences.

duplicate

Bob Carnie said:

Next 20 years will be more interesting I just need to keep healthy.

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Just go to the gym, no more smoking n no more McD's.

Luis-F-S said:

Just go to the gym

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Ugh, that's not living. Unless you mean ride your bike to the gym, peek in at all the fools riding Exercycles indoors, then ride back home. That's exercise and living all rolled into one.

For what it's worth, I just finished my darkroom and it's a been a dream to use so far. I live in NYC (Astoria) and split the utilities, common chemistry and capital costs between two other partners. We're all fanatics about silver printing so once we were all on board, it was fairly straightforward. Construction took 6 weeks and if you can do all the labor yourself, it's not that expensive.

(there was a url link here which no longer exists) - Darkroom Portrait

xvelids said:

For what it's worth, I just finished my darkroom and it's a been a dream to use so far. I live in NYC (Astoria) and split the utilities, common chemistry and capital costs between two other partners. We're all fanatics about silver printing so once we were all on board, it was fairly straightforward. Construction took 6 weeks and if you can do all the labor yourself, it's not that expensive.

(there was a url link here which no longer exists) - Darkroom Portrait

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Did you build it in a space that you or one of your partners already own or did you go out and rent/lease a space?

Please PM me if you are not comfortable posting your answer here.

Not to detract from your noble and hopefully successful effort Bob, but they didn't build a darkroom in Duluth. All they did was dust it off. It was already a fully equipped and functional darkroom with ~10 enlargers needing little more than someone to replenish the stock solutions.

Wayne said:

Not to detract from your noble...

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That makes it a whole lot easier! There are quite a few community darkroom in New York. If I remember correctly, there is the community darkroom in Bushwick, community darkroom in Gowanus and there's ABC No Rio. I've been to ABC No Rio, which is a DIY Punk sort of place. So, there are definitely a few community spaces and then there are the schools, pro labs and private labs which some are open to renting.

In terms of my space, I own the property. I don't rent which I feel in NY can be a total nightmare. Renato - feel free to PM me if you have questions!

The best suggestion I can offer if you want a dream darkroom is rob a bank. But really, if you look around a bit and have a solid truck, you
can often get wonderful equipment for free. Get 4x5 enlargers or bigger. You can always use them for smaller formats, and they'll be way
more solid, and more common too. I hauled a very nice Durst 8x10 enlarger home yesterday - a lot of work. But with a few weeks of cleaning
and polishing and tuning it will be as good as new.

Drew

I have enough equipment traditional and digital to sink a ship. On top of the gear I have I will be implementing a Image Setter (lambda) that will be making
large film in silver for contact process, silver and Alt.

I am thinking to go to art council of Canada and see if I can get help building out the facility. As well there is sufficient evidence of private
companies like mine with niche services getting accreditation to teach our specialty's. Basically students in Canada can use the credits towards
their degrees.
Location I am thinking needs help, as its one of the older steel towns that are on the great lakes and suffering financially.

I am interested in how other private organizations have approached their local and federal govt with plans.

Bob

DREW WILEY said:

The best suggestion I can offer if you want a dream darkroom is rob a bank. But really, if you look around a bit and have a solid truck, you
can often get wonderful equipment for free. Get 4x5 enlargers or bigger. You can always use them for smaller formats, and they'll be way
more solid, and more common too. I hauled a very nice Durst 8x10 enlarger home yesterday - a lot of work. But with a few weeks of cleaning
and polishing and tuning it will be as good as new.

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I still don't know exactly what I'm going to do, Bob. The fellow who wants to partner with me on the next phase was helping me move the
enlarger yesterday, among others. All the digital operations are going into his personal facility, while I'm going to stick to traditional film and darkroom work. If a gallery and teaching facility transpires next year, we'll only put clean tasks in there like mounting and matcutting,
copystand, studio lighting etc. My own darkroom is too packed for general teaching, and the equipment is far too individualized and precise to let anyone else monkey with. Finding cute older real estate around here that doesn't have hazmat or seismic issues is pretty tricky. But we've both got a lot of experience remodeling. I need to be done with gear projects during the next few months. Mostly just a few pin register jigs to complete, plus this final enlarger to tuneup.

crowd funding ?

I don't have enough time on the clock to await public funding. There have been extensive renovations of military bases and so forth around here involving hundreds of millions of dollars of hazmat work in every instance. That takes decades to complete. But then, whenever they
say it will be dedicated to affordable use like the arts community, every single time some famous gazoolionaire ends up monopolizing the
whole neighborhood for some titanic monument to his own ego and shoots up the remaining leases twenty times or more, literally. Big money wins every time, no matter what the original promises were. Or some damn sports venue where they'll spend billions, yet two blocks away can't afford enough police staffing to keep the neighborhood from being a war zone run by pimps and drug dealers.

Like Toronto - San Fran is a very expensive town to do something like this- I have come to the conclusion that if I try to keep it in Toronto I will have to really keep a commercial side
of business available to pay the bills and frankly that does not cut it for me. I am too much of a control freek (good or bad) and it makes me oversee too much .


Right now I have X % of my work coming from out of province, or out of Town, I want to increase this number by X% - this gives many opportunities to relocate to a more
conducive area space and $$ so that I can still operate the base business.

One of the private PM's I just received nailed my goals on the head... my plan is to provide a space where young and old artists can come to my space... live, work and execute a final framed project.
They walk in with negatives, of digital files, and drive out with crates loaded to go to their destination. Basically a full lab facility and frame shop with spartan facility's to live and nourish.
I actually do not want to do the work for them, but rather be around during significant times to gently nudge them if they are going astray.


I love being in the center of young people who are finding their photographic voice , right now my first international assistant is hanging a 55 piece show, in my gallery and in the show some of my first assistants going back 22 years are
in the show. A lot of my past workers are coming back to me to produce work , and quite a few new faces are dropping by showing interest.
It seems that there is a resurgence of young workers who are Urbanized and not able to afford to build a facility that is actually housing the right equipment to make gallery quality work . I have the equipment
and the willingness to teach a bit, I think I can find the space.


QUOTE=DREW WILEY;1953811750]I still don't know exactly what I'm going to do, Bob. The fellow who wants to partner with me on the next phase was helping me move the
enlarger yesterday, among others. All the digital operations are going into his personal facility, while I'm going to stick to traditional film and darkroom work. If a gallery and teaching facility transpires next year, we'll only put clean tasks in there like mounting and matcutting,
copystand, studio lighting etc. My own darkroom is too packed for general teaching, and the equipment is far too individualized and precise to let anyone else monkey with. Finding cute older real estate around here that doesn't have hazmat or seismic issues is pretty tricky. But we've both got a lot of experience remodeling. I need to be done with gear projects during the next few months. Mostly just a few pin register jigs to complete, plus this final enlarger to tuneup.[/QUOTE]

That is a possibility, I will be looking at all possibilities over the next three years.

RobC said:

crowd funding ?

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I am tempted, visited Montreal two weekends ago , Wow what an amazing city, I was totally impressed and actually thought that I could flourish there, my wife's roots are Niagara Peninsula so we will gravitate that way.
I do plan to get to know the Montreal photography scene and work with gallery's there to promote work from Ontario and Quebec. I think this will be part of my future, getting symbiotic relationships with like minded
groups in different cities, I have made inroads in Conneticut, Louisville and I have a strong connection with the Vivian Maier people in Chicago and will explore all these options.
Next on my Radar is Halifax and Winnipeg, any interested ideas from there are really appreciated.

I booked a solo show for myself in April- May and as well two weeks in November for another client in Montreal , and I hope to somehow connect
with the Papier Festival.

Michael R 1974 said:

Do it in Montreal!! Cheap rent!

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