Photography
2023
Marseille, France
Darkroom Diaries
A book and an exhibition made in one red-lit room over a winter.
Client
Galerie Nord
Services
Photography, printing, book design
Duration
9 months
Led by
Saskia Brandt
No. 01
Overview
Forty black-and-white prints, made by hand, about the small rituals of working in the dark.
A room you can only enter with the light off
Saskia set up in our basement darkroom for one winter and photographed everything that happens in it: trays, timers, wet paper on a line, hands moving under a safelight.
Nothing was staged. The red light stayed on, the door stayed closed and the only rule was that nobody spoke while the enlarger was running.
From negative to book
Every print in the show was made by hand from the negative. We tested six papers before choosing a warm fibre paper that holds shadow detail without going muddy.
The book is sewn, not glued, and the cover cloth is the same colour as the safelight, so the book looks like it has been switched on.
No. 02
Results
40
Hand-made prints
600
Copies of the book
3
Cities toured
No. 03
In their words
The prints look the way a quiet room sounds.
Curator, Galerie Nord
No. 04
Keep walking
More doors from the studio.
Architecture
A stone farmhouse rebuilt around a row of arches and one old fig tree.
Architecture
Twenty-four homes around a shared courtyard, built from kiln-formed clay blocks.
No. 00
Next door
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