Spinster

(Background: I have been doing creative black-and-white film photography since 7th grade, and it’s a pretty important part of my life. A couple of years ago, before I left Portland, I bought a Bronica ETR-Si (a single lens reflex medium format camera), which takes film that is several times larger than 35mm. Because the film is larger, the normal lens that is on an enlarger won’t accommodate the entire negative; if you make a print from 120 film using a 50mm lens, you get vignetting, which is generally not a desirable effect. Thus, you must use an 80mm lens with 120 size film.

In Toronto, I’ve been using the darkroom facilities at Hart House, the student center at UofT. For a student-run space, the facilities are pretty good: they have several individual darkrooms with a variety of enlargers, including a couple of color enlargers and one with an 80mm lens; a color printer (not a piece of computer equipment!); a digital darkroom; and a new shared darkroom with 7 enlargers. For $30 bucks a year (for students), you get access to all of this, which is a sweet deal: photography is a very expensive art.

The downside of using a communal space is, of course, having to share. Though there are equipment and chemicals curators, who do a lot of maintenance and general darkroom upkeep, students are expected to do their share of the work. We must clean up after ourselves in the darkrooms, pick up our dry prints and film after a reasonable length of time, and return darkroom accessories to the common space once we have finished using them. Unfortunately, it’s rare for me to open the door to “my” darkroom –the one I use because the enlarger has the lens I need– and not find some kind of mess. Alternatively, the darkroom is clean and organized, but the 11×14 trays are missing from the common space, or the drying racks are littered with prints that look like they’ve been there for weeks. I would expect and/or understand this from middle school students, but university students? It’s ridiculous. And so, this is my letter to the careless students I have to put up with.)

Dear careless photography students,

I have had to share the Hart House darkroom space with you for over a year now, and I have noticed that some of you seem to have forgotten –or maybe you never knew in the first place– how to properly use and return the darkroom equipment, and how to clean up after yourselves. In the interest of us getting along, I took the liberty of making a list, full of helpful reminders.

Without further ado, here it is:

1. Remeber, we do not develop film and make prints using rainbows and smiles. The chemicals we use are of varying degrees of toxicity and therefore, it is important that you wipe down any and all surfaces on which you inevitably spill them. I am tired of walking into the darkroom, only to find that the stainless steel sink and counter space are covered in brown and red sludge. And none of the chemicals we use are either brown or red.

2. Please do not hoard the 11×14 developing trays. Normally, there are fifty billion trays, ranging from 5×7 inches to 4×5 feet, and when I can only find three lousy 8×10s, it doesn’t make for an awesome printing experience. You may feel like you are the only person who prints 11×14, and that therefore, it is perfectly okay to keep them in “your” darkroom, but I assure you, you are mistaken.

3. We have a limited amount of space on which to dry our film and our prints. There are six or seven drying screens, and the highest ones are out of my reach; the highest ones are out of everyone’s reach, and as a result, the lower ones fill up fast. I have no idea how many people use the facilities in a given week, but regardless of the number, there seem to be two camps:

a. Those who leave their (goddamn RC*) prints on the screens for what feels like years, so that when I make room for my (fiber*) prints, I am seeing the same muddy, dirty, craptastic shots over and over and over again. (These may or may not be the same people who steal prints; I’m not sure. I am sure, however, that these are the same people who clog the (tiny) film closet with their bone-dry rolls of film.) Just pick them up already!

b. Those who do us all a favor and pick up their prints and film on time. I love you, I really do.

Thank you for your attention to these points. Feel free to start taking them into consideration when using the Hart House darkrooms.

Yours,

Tasha

*The reason that the RC (resin coated) prints do not generally belong on the drying rack is that, as far as I know, we have a print dryer. If we don’t have a print dryer, my mistake, and I apologize for being bitchy about your RC prints. RC prints are strong enough when wet to go through the print dryer. Fiber prints are much more fragile, and have to be air-dried, preferrably on screens.