Last Summer I was fortunate enough to be in the last group of students to take what easily became my favorite class so far, Custom Color Print. This darkroom experience was different than the traditional black and white darkroom, where you were in a large open room with other students under the glow of the red safety light. To print on color darkroom paper you need to be in complete darkness, therefore no safety lights, and each student was alone in there own small room. I remember thinking during my first walk down the rather creepy hallway to my assigned color print room, that there was no way I was going to enjoy this class; that was until I saw my first print come out of the printer. From that first print on, I knew it was love. I couldn’t get enough of how beautiful the colors looked; I had never seen anything like it.
We were told early on in this course that we would be the last group of students going through this course, as the chemistry was becoming increasingly more expensive and the school’s supply was low. Knowing this, I shot more film than ever, just to have the ability to print them in this traditional way. A few of the instructors left us boxes of old paper in various sizes that we were allowed to experiment with. Some of the paper was way past the expiration date, and others were completely light fogged; but it was the unpredictable nature of these papers that made the printing process that much more fun. The night that the printer had run its final print and ran out of the last drop of chemistry, was very hard to take in. This class came at a time when I was feeling so much pressure from all my classes and was in a creative slump. Having the ability to experiment and make art in this new way was so freeing, and an experience I am incredibly grateful for.
The images in this post were actually Ilford Medium Format black and white negatives, that I stacked on top of each other to create a double exposure and printed in the color darkroom. The images get their pink color from heat damaged paper that is over 10 years old.
Two black and white negatives, stacked, and printed in a color dark room to give a blue tint.
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