Printing the archive
This winter I spent a few weeks in the darkroom going back through old rolls and printing the frames that had been waiting their turn.
- Categories
- Miscellanea, Nature
- Related work
- Devil's Rock
Most of what I shoot never leaves the negative sleeve. A roll gets developed, scanned at low resolution and filed away with a date and a place scribbled on the sleeve. A handful of frames make it into a project; the rest wait.
This winter I finally gave them some attention. I booked a few weeks at a shared darkroom across town and brought three boxes of negatives with me, going back as far as the first rolls I shot on a borrowed camera.
Looking at old frames with fresh eyes is a strange experience. The pictures I was proud of at the time often feel forced now, while the in-between shots, taken while waiting for something else to happen, hold up far better.
Printing by hand slows everything down. Each image needs a test strip, a few attempts at exposure and contrast, and time in the wash before you can judge it properly. On a good day I would finish three or four prints.
Contact sheets
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Before printing anything I made contact sheets of every roll and spread them across the studio floor. Seeing a whole roll at once shows you how you were thinking that day: where you hesitated, where you kept circling the same idea, and which frame you were working towards.
By the end of the month there were around forty finished prints pinned to the wall. Some will go into a small book later this year; others will probably stay in a drawer. Either way, they are out of the sleeve.
Everything was printed on fibre-based paper from 35mm and 120 negatives. The images on this page are scans of the prints rather than the negatives, so they carry a little of the paper's texture.
