Last One Out, Please Turn On The Light

www.richardnicholson.com

Summer 2006. Durst announces that it will no longer manufacture photographic enlargers. Sales have plummeted from a peak of 107,000 units in 1979 to just a few hundred units in recent years.

1979 was the year my father constructed a darkroom and introduced me to photography. I was immediately entranced by the printing process, and I cherished the long hours spent in this dark, silent, private space. Ever since the darkroom has been integral to my work as a photographer. But for how much longer?

Labs are closing their doors - Joe's Basement, Primary, Metro Clerkenwell, Metro Soho have all gone. Polaroid has stopped making instant film. Clients are demanding the immediate feedback of digital photography.

This project, shot on 4"x5" film, documents London's remaining professional darkrooms. It is based on my nostalgia for a dying craft (there are no young printers). It is in these rooms that printers have worked their magic, distilling the works of photographers such as David Bailey, Anton Corbijn and Nick Knight into a recognisable 'look'.

I have lit these often-gloomy spaces to reveal the beauty of the machinery; enlargers are masterpieces of industrial design. And I have sought to shed light on the surrounding personal workspaces (snapshots of family members, souvenirs from globetrotting photographers, guidebooks to Photoshop, out-takes from glamour shoots, lists of unpaid invoices).

Several of the darkrooms featured have since closed down. Others will surely follow. (The darkroom with the slogan pinned to the wall, 'I want to stay here forever', was dismantled shortly after I photographed it and is now being converted into luxury apartments.)

Since starting this project, I've become a late and reluctant convert to digital photography. I now spend less time in the darkroom and more time in front of the computer. With film I had a network of contacts across London and I felt embedded in the city. In comparison, digital feels disembodied.

I miss the darkroom's ambience, the physicality of dodging and burning, the shaping of the light.

Richard Nicholson, May 2008

I would like to thank all the printers who kindly invited me to photograph their darkrooms

Parting Shot by John Choi

A pleasant and friendly game of racketball with John

I could go on about the chairs I've seen

Senior Exhibition, 04/10/09
8pm to 10 pm. Fisher Gallery
Helen Stuhr-Rommereim & Cara Turrett

A selection of work

Kate Reeder, 2004


Rebeca Fuchs, 2004

Sam-o's Pics of the Lab , Fall 2008

From the album:
"Photo kidz and other art related things" by Sam-o Draisin

Rachel likes walking in my shot

In this photo: Gregory Wikstrom (photos), Rachel Saudek (photos), Helen Stuhr-Rommereim (photos), Yujean Park (photos)

The gang likes waiting for the color processor to finish processing their test strips so they can see what adjustments to the filters and aperture they have to make in order for their final prints to come out as aesthetically pleasing as possible (based on the quality of the negative, the age of the paper, and several other variables)!

In this photo: John Choi (photos), Caroline Casey, Skylar Sweetman (photos), Yujean Park (photos)

Fall 054 reunion

Welcome back Yujean, the Geisha Punk sitting amongst the other members of the Doctor Confucius ( Caroline, Skylar).
Taken at Saturday Brunch.

Dave Maisel Library Of Dust

Library of Dust
2005 — 2006

“. . . these canisters hold the cremated remains of patients from an American psychiatric hospital. Oddly reminiscent of bullet casings, the canisters are literal gravesites. Reacting with their ash inhabitants, the canisters are now blooming with secondary minerals, articulating new metallic landscapes.”

— Geoff Manaugh, Contemporary

Richards Misrach's On the Beach

For more than thirty years, the American photographer Richard Misrach (b. 1949) has made provocative work that addresses contemporary society's relationship to nature, especially the American West. Since 2001, he has made a series of large scale (six by ten feet), lushly colored photographs of swimmers and sunbathers in Hawaii. Looking down from a hotel room directly adjacent to the beach, he has eliminated all references to the horizon and sky to record people immersed in the idyllic environment. Yet, despite the beauty of the scene, a strange sense of disquietude pervades these photographs. Made in the days immediately after September 11, 2001, these photographs speak of the unease and sense of foreboding that pervaded the country after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The title of the series, On the Beach, is drawn from Nevil Shute's cold war novel about nuclear holocaust.
National Gallery Of Art

Helen Stuhr-Rommereim

Our monitor is a recent recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship.

Congrats to Rachel

Congratulation to Rachel who won top honor at FAVA's Six States Photography Juried Exhibition