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I missed your Instagram post so have added a quick comment there. But to elaborate here, when I returned to the UK in 2018 I had been using film for several years but never had access to a darkroom. When we came back, I searched for a darkroom in the area and was so thrilled to find Kiln Photo, kilnphoto.co.uk, which I have been a member…
I missed your Instagram post so have added a quick comment there. But to elaborate here, when I returned to the UK in 2018 I had been using film for several years but never had access to a darkroom. When we came back, I searched for a darkroom in the area and was so thrilled to find Kiln Photo, https://www.kilnphoto.co.uk/, which I have been a member of ever since. There are two things in particular that resonate for me in this newsletter.
One is that "it’s a practice of making and creating physical things." I spend too much time at the computer. I wanted to stand and contemplate and make in a non-digital fashion and the darkroom has enabled this. It has its own frustrations, but so does fully digital work.
Secondly, it is a meditative process. It allows time for thought, for contemplation. I also find it helpful emotionally. When I returned to the UK in 2018 it was because my mother was terminally ill. Being in the darkroom, going through the gentle, repetitive and yes, meditative process of developing a print brought me to a place emotionally that helped me cope in the final two months of her life and afterwards.
I now work with both film and digital photography, and although the price of film and paper is becoming increasingly prohibitive I will maintain this as long as I can.