My First Darkroom (completely pointless story)

PhotoPete · Oct 4, 2005

When my wife and I bought our house three years ago, I noticed a walled-off pantry in one corner of the basement and thought "that could make a good darkroom someday." I had always wanted a darkroom, but I didn't have any of the equipment, and, as a renter, I was unwilling to the structural improvements usually required for a permanent darkroom.

About six months ago, someday finally came. I built some storage shelves on the other side of the basement and hauled out all the garbage, er, treasures, that we were storing in the pantry. Once the room was free of detritus, I started to wipe down all the surfaces. I pulled up some contact paper from one of the shelves and underneath it was...a small pile of negatives. Suddenly, the "pantry" made sense...the blackout materials on the casement window, the one section of counter lower than the rest, the odd stains all over the room...this had been a darkroom years ago! Some of the cracks around the plumbing that passes through the room had been made light-tight with newspapers. None of the pieces I pulled out had a date, but news stories were clearly from WWII and most of the movies listed were released in 1943.

None of the negatives are masterpieces and some of them have serious chemical stains, but they were the first things I printed once I had everything in place, and those prints still hang on the walls of the darkroom. I feel a strong sense of connection to the larger photographic world from working in a darkroom that was set up by a complete stranger almost thirty years before I was born. Am I just a sentimental fool or is this kind of cool?

Kevin Caulfield · Oct 4, 2005

No, you're not a sentimental fool at all. That is a very cool story. Thanks for telling us.

BWGirl · Oct 4, 2005

You know... if you are a sentimental fool, you have obviously come to the right place... if we didn't have a strong link to the 'way things were' we'd be shooting those horrible little cameras with view screens.....

That was a wonderful story... thanks for sharing it.

Flotsam · Oct 4, 2005

Great story.
Now set up that darkroom and start making some more negatives!
Be sure to go through the whole "Darkroom Portraits" thread first.

Bob F. · Oct 4, 2005

100% cool. I especially like that you printed from the found negs and put them on the wall.

Bob.

panchromatic · Oct 4, 2005

A photographer buddie of mine just moved into a house that once was the house, and office of a dentist. Now the dentisted used to develop his own dental pictures, and he found a similar setup in his basement

always neat to reuse something special like that

Nige · Oct 5, 2005

sentimental fool or not, enjoyable reading... wouldn't mind seeing a couple of scans of those prints.

athanasius80 · Oct 5, 2005

Don't worry about being a sentimental fool. If we'd been "sensible" and listened to the experts most of the best parts of culture would have been recycled ages ago.

laz · Oct 5, 2005

Hey I lived in Waltham, MA in 1943, had a darkroom by cracky.....just kidding (1943 is 11 years before my birth) But it is a wonderful story. We have owned a 250 year old house for the past 25 years. There are little pieces of past residents scattered everywhere, it's part of what makes living in an old house so alluring.

When I'm somewhere with some history to it I often think about who walked where I'm walking, what they did, what they cared about and especially what their world looked like. The local library has old photos of our house and the one across the street from us (it was all one property once) seeing the towering maple in front of my house as a sapling says something about the continuity of life, our connection to the past.

Photographs talk to us from the past, sometimes we are even lucky enough to be able to look into the eyes of our ancestors. I recently received family albums I never knew existed. The last page has a Daguerrotype of my 3rd great grandmother at around age 20, posing with her favorite slave, my mind reels everytime I look at it.

Melanie · Oct 5, 2005

Love the idea that you printed the neg out...
we are in the process of building a house on three acres that we purchased and one of the parcels had a adobe barn and a small house that was built in the early 1900 and we are alwas finding little bits and pieces of there pottery and horse equipment etc, mostly bridle and bits for the horses, and my husband found enough of a small plate and glued it together. I have a large basket and have just been putting the items in it, but you have a great idea in posting them on the walls of your dark room.
thanks for giving me some new concepts in what i can do with my treasures.
Melanie

laz · Oct 5, 2005

Melanie said:
I have a large basket and have just been putting the items in it, but you have a great idea in posting them on the walls of your dark room. thanks for giving me some new concepts in what i can do with my treasures.
Melanie

I've had just such a basket for the past 25 years. My plan has always been to set all my pottery shards in cement and set the result in the garden.

eclarke · Oct 5, 2005

I like the found negative aspect also. A friend who worked at the leading camera store in Milwaukee waited on a lady who found a small box of "old"negtives and brought them to show to him. They were 35mm and when he examined them, the subjects were Ernst Leitz, Teddy Roosevelt, Henry Ford and other luminaries of the time at hunting camp. My friend is a fair camera historian and was of the opinion that Leitz had probably presented T.R. with a Leica and it was used to take the photos. What great history..EC (Also completely pointless)

removed account4 · Oct 5, 2005

i lived in a industrial building that was a publishing house (newspapers + magazines) between 1896- 1950s. in the 70s it was converted by a bunch of artist-hippies into live-work space.

one day i went to where the paper was publised in the 1990s and got the front page of the paper from when they moved into the olde building. it had views of the building and all the rooms being used &C. we made prints and gave it to everyone in the building. my room was one of the type-fitting rooms, and i used to find bits and pieces of type and lead spacers in cracks of the floor. i have a slide box filled with these artifacts ... it was kind of fun finding a connection with what used to go on there before we gave the building a new life.

before i knew about "the somerville journal building" i bought a lens from a local photographer. it turns out that 25 years earlier this photographer (and the lens) lived in the same space that i ended up renting. i shot a bunch of film with the lens, and processed / printed in the studio space that this guy built. i thought about leaving the lens there, in its former home, hidden somewhere for another photographer to find and use ... then i stuck it in my case and took it with me.

have fun in your new ( olde ) darkroom!

- john

Jim Chinn · Oct 5, 2005

PhotoPete said:
I pulled up some contact paper from one of the shelves and underneath it was...a small pile of negatives.

Darn. it is a great story but when I got to the underneath part I was hoping you were going to find a vintage Adams or Weston print hiding.

SuzanneR · Oct 5, 2005

Great story!! thanks for sharing... and post some of those prints you made!

Donald Qualls · Oct 5, 2005

BWGirl said:
if we didn't have a strong link to the 'way things were' we'd be shooting those horrible little cameras with view screens.....

What? Hey, wait, I use a camera with a viewscreen (actually, two). The screen is about 3 1/2 by 4 1/2 inches, and it's protected by a folding cover with a black cloth enclosure, to keep light off so I can see the screen. Mine's really old, though, and may be a little out of adjustment; everything in the screen is upside down, and I have to remove the screen to actually take a picture.

It's really not so horrible, though; in fact, it's rather enjoyable (except for the crick I get in my back from hunching over to look in that little screen -- maybe someday I can afford one with a bigger screen, and a taller tripod to put it on).

Gay Larson · Oct 5, 2005

Loved the story, I converted my Father-in-Law's workroom in the basement into my darkroom. He was a chemist and made his own candles for many years. I also found some of the negatives he had taken in the late 1920's and have them saved to print eventually. I also paper my walls with some of my prints to remind me of where I've come from. Hopefully I will see lots of improvements. About 12 years ago before he died he gave me his manual Minolta and it started me taking dozens and dozens of classes and workshops and buying bigger and bigger cameras and darkroom equipment. It lead me to a passion for black and white photography. I think he would approve of my darkroom.

My First Darkroom (completely pointless story)

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