Have you ever wondered if you are a dinosaur – metaphorically speaking, that is? Sometimes, I do… steadfastly continuing a tradition that the digital revolution almost succeeded in pushing to the confines of history: photographic darkroom printing.
For me, what has been lost with the digital age is the ‘magic’: the sense of wonder associated with the early history of photography, the physicality of the process and the relationship of maker to that which is made. I do not reject digital practices – on the contrary they are very much part of how I work. But I have chosen a dual path where analogue and digital work to each other’s strengths to achieve outstanding results.
The lost art of the darkroom
Apart from those who choose to study photography, the current generation of young people have little or no concept of how images were formed with chemical reactions prior to the digital age, nor do they understand the fundamental nature and essence of light.
So, it is always a delight to see the reaction of children working in a darkroom for the first time, exploring and experimenting with Photograms and Chemigrams. Their excitement at being enveloped in a dark space, so reminiscent of being in a unlit cave, and working under red or amber safe lights. The tactile nature of analogue photography is a novel experience for them.
What inspired me to write this article from a more personal perspective, as an artist, was reading the current edition of the PhotoResearcher Journal, which has dedicated its entire content to a series of research articles on the history and societal impact of darkrooms. A fascinating read!
My own journey
To gain some context, let’s travel back to 1988 – 1991 during my undergraduate days in Printmaking and Photography at Edinburgh College of Art. These three formative years were set against the back drop of Poll Tax protests imposed by the ‘Iron Lady’ of politics, Margaret Thatcher, which was particularly contentious in Scotland. Student sit-ins demonstrating against the Tory policy to end all student grants; apartheid boycotts and the subsequent release of Nelson Mandela from prison in South Africa; the peaceful revolution that led to the dismantling of the ‘Iron Curtain’ between East and West Berlin, and the Tiananmen Square revolt in China were all part of the backdrop during those years. Those were indeed heady days!
Politics aside, darkrooms were a firm fixture in all walks of life, and at art college I was fortunate to have access to the main darkroom in the photography department and a smaller darkroom in printmaking, which was also furnished with a Cibachrome colour printer, next to a room for exposing photo-etching plates and a room with traditional papermaking facilities. Etching, photography and paper making became my chosen disciplines.
The road to the digitised world
During this time computers were still in their infancy. The first cutting edge Apple Macintosh desktop computers were available to us at Edinburgh College of Art. Yet within the timeframe of a few momentous years, the World Wide Web (AKA the internet) was invented by Tim Berners-Lee in 1989; the first marketable digital camera, ‘Logitech Fotoman’, arrived in 1991, and in 1992 the JPEG file format launched. In combination, these innovations paved the way for the digital revolution that changed the course of human history, and brought about the demise of an analogue system in our society, heavily reliant, in my chosen discipline, on the use of photographic darkrooms.
The software capability of the 1989 computer was demonstrated to us: a manipulated photograph of the US President Ronald Reagan shaking hands with the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) leader Yasser Arafat – a convincing artifice. This was five years before the unprecedented – and very genuine – 1993 image of Arafat shaking hands with the Israeli Prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin in the presence of the US President Bill Clinton. I don’t think any of us fully comprehended the consequence this new technology would have on analogue photographic practices and society as a whole.
I applaud any educational institution that has not dismantled their darkrooms. Yes, there was a decline in their use whilst all the world revelled in the art of digital photography, and film and paper manufacturers were badly hit by this decline. But time has demonstrated a strengthening in the sector and a demand has risen once again for analogue techniques. In fact, in just the last few years, demand for analogue film has risen so dramatically that Kodak has returned to a 24/7 film manufacturing operation.
How can a university photography department teach the subject without having the resources to demonstrate the fundamental techniques of wet based processes alongside digital ones? Surely the opportunity to study photography is also an opportunity to think in lateral ways and experiment with and without cameras in unpredictable ways. Even though I was going against the flow, I kept my darkroom practice going.
The best of both worlds
I enjoy the workflow between my darkroom and studio, which has also been adapted to work under ultraviolet safe light conditions. I continue to process black and white films that require total darkness. My workflow consists of digitising my black and white films. I work with Adobe software to adjust my images prior to enlarging my negatives, then printing in a variety of historic analogue processes. My specialism, however, is carbon transfer printing in full colour and black and white, which is rising in popularity for the discerning photographer wanting exhibition quality handmade prints that far exceed the quality of inkjet prints. In 2023 I printed 25 unique colour images for the National Portrait Gallery (NPG) in London for a major exhibition ‘Yevonde, Life and Colour’. The NPG produced a short documentary of me in my darkroom fully explaining the carbon technique and a blog post.
The reality, though, is that a world with less chemical waste is a positive consequence of the digital age, which is all too prevalent with analogue printing techniques. It is also one of the reasons why I have chosen to specialise in a process that uses very little chemistry. So much change has taken place in commercial settings, in hospitals, laboratories and the creative industries, switching to digital imaging. The digital age has also paved the way for further innovation.
But let’s not underestimate an analogue tradition that has endured for almost two hundred years. What the digital revolution did for analogue photography was to create a specialism, which in the hands of passionate artists, photographers and filmmakers, has given the medium greater exposure and made analogue processes more desirable to collectors.
Katayoun Dowlatshahi runs specialist workshops, often with small groups or one-to-one, in analogue photography and printmaking from her Silverwood Art Studio and Darkroom in Northrepps in North Norfolk. Further information about these, her bespoke workshops and an unabridged version of this article are on her website.
