Darkroom criteria : Space

For the location of my new darkroom I chose the ground floor of this granite walled barn. Because they are 50 cm thick and partially buried on the east side (you are looking at now) the granite walls act as a temperature regulator. Furthermore the first floor protects the ground floor from heat coming through the roof in the midst of summer.

We live at a hight of 1000 meters in the middle of France. In winter temperatures can get as low as -20'C (-4 'F) and in summer they go up to +40'C (104 'F). But in winter our cats' water bowl has never frozen inside the barn. And in summer inside temperatures were typically 25 'C. They never exceded 28 'C.

I wil isolate the darkroom ceiling. The walls will be plastered but not isolated, to keep their temperature regulating function. Ideally the walls should be isolated on the outside, but that would destroy the traditional aspect of the barn. Experience will show if I have to add isolation.

Space

Inside the barn is 6x8 meter (19.5x26 feet). A surface of 48 m2 (516 ft2). It has to be divided into a darkroom area and a print finishing / office space. After a lot of deliberations I decided on a darkroom space of 4.4 x 6 m, and a print finishing space of 3.3 x 6 m, with a concrete wall between them.

Group space
This darkroom has to be optimised for me when I'm working alone on my fine art prints. But it also has to accomodate up to 6 persons while I teach my workshops. What is the best architecture to provide both?

Every enlarger needs enough working space. At the very least 80 cm. But preferably more. In a normal one-person darkroom the dry and wet sides are on opposite walls, with 1 to 1.5 m between them. Narrow enough to simply turn around when changing from the dry to the wet side, but still large enough to move around.

The best way to provide this for multiple persons is to make long dry and wet sides, with the same 1 - 1.5 m between them.  In my 6 m long darkroom I could put 5 working stations in a row, if there wasn't a door. With a door in the middle there is space for 2 large workspaces on each side of the door. And when I put the wet side in the middle of the room, another 4 enlargers could be placed on the other side of the wet space.But I need storagespace too, and a wooden beam in the middle of the barn supports the first floor. So I came up with this :

Each square is a square foot. 3 squares are a meter. The left side is the finishing office, the right side the darkroom. Green = worksurface. Blue = wet bench. Brown = storage and bookshelves. Red = the darkroom entrance. Purple = toilet.

The width of the wet bench has to lodge the short side of my largest trays. About 75 cm wide. The length will depend upon the measures of the materials I can find. But it has to be at least 4 m (12 feet).

My personal darkroom history

I started my darkroom life at different photoclubs. But I soon wanted a darkroom of my own. So, like so many before me, our bathroom regularly transformed into a temporary darkroom. In the beginning it was fun. Later, setting up and breaking down the darkroom became a big PITA. The six darkrooms that followed were established in empty bedrooms, low ceiling moist caves, or suffocating attics. Often heavy curtains functioned as a light trap. Or towels prevented the dark from leaking out under the door. There was rarely any  ventilation at all, and running water was a big bucket.

My third darkroom was in the French town of Calais. I rented a room while I worked at the Chunnel construction site. With 10 to 12 hour working days I reduced my nights to six hours of sleep (I was still young) so I could do printing at night. My bedroom transformed into a darkoom with an opemus enlarger on the table. Developer trays on a cupboard. And a small sink as a print washer. I ate and slept in the same room. Once I used ammonia to eliminate fixer from prints. That night the ammonia bottle started leaking while I slept. I almost died from pneumonia. My voice didn't return until weeks later. If it hadn't been for my poor condition, my landlord would have evicted me.

In those days I worked standing up. While living in a Paris suburb (Ivry sur Seine) I started selling prints of weddings and priest ordinations. Printing often took several days, and I had to practice yoga to return the blood flow in my legs. Since then I have taken to printing seated.

Back in Holland I studied to be a professional photographer. In those days every photographer had to know analogue darkroom techniques. I quickly noticed that I could have taught my teachers and then some.

For the next twelve years I worked in several state penitentiaries (not as a photographer). The last seven years in a maximum security prison. Large format photography and the darkroom helped me to switch off from my passionate but not so easy work environment. So, I constructed a darkroom in our attic. After presenting my darkroom on the internet it has become the longest active thread on APUG ("argentic" that's me).

In 2006 we moved back to France, where we bought a bicentennial farmhouse in the Livradois-Forez national parc. There was no electricity, heating, water or sewage. So, I did a lot of construction work just to move in. In the meantime I started Phot-O-Vergne teaching photography courses. And with some friends I started a public darkroom at the university campus of Clermont-Ferrand which attracts a lot of students every year.

In 2009, after three years of virtual darkroom deprevation I started building a topnotch darkroom in one of our granit walled barns. In this blog you can follow its construction. I now own a photography store in Ambert which takes up most of my time. So the darkroom construction has slowed down. But bit by bit I will get there. Hope you enjoy this blog.

Don't hesitate to comment. I'm always open for suggestions and tips.

Wilbert

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