Wednesday 4 February 2009

Printer's darkrooms


The digital revolution has certainly given us all a huge degree of added freedom along with a bigger and more complex workload. And just as the hot metal boys disappeared from Fleet Street (and Albion Street if you're going all Weegee) in favour of digital type setting, so too the darkroom giants are fast disappearing.
And to document these usually unseen working spaces Richard Nicholson has managed to gain access to many of the unique and personal spaces of top London printers to produce 'Last One Out, Please Turn On The Light'. Worth a look if you've too young to have been in one or you want to invoke the smell of hypo again. Featured here is Debbie Sears enlarger at Metro in Clerkenwell. And no that's not an early AppleMac.
And talking of another Weegee... he worked in 30's and 40's New York shooting crime scenes and victims and the dead. Frequently arriving before even the police (he had permission to listen in on their frequency) he shot fast with a handheld 5x4 inch camera and processed the film in his car as he drove back to the paper. Who needs digital?
Thanks again to JM Colberg at Conscientious - always available on the sidebar.

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