This is a living document that collects materials pertaining to the histories of the darkroom, its contemporary iterations, and works by practitioners who engage in its conceptualisation. Please get in touch if you know a text or project not listed here.

Histories of the darkroom

Juliet Baillie, “Homemade Gadgets and Makeshift Darkrooms: Skilled Amateur Photography in 1930s Britain.” In Recording Leisure Lives: Everyday Leisure in 20th Century Britain, edited by S. Robert, H. Pussard, and M. Constantine, 149–164, Eastbourne: Leisure Studies Association, 2012.

Lily Cho, “Darkroom Material: Race and the Chromogenic Print Process.” Postmodern Culture 28, no. 2 (2018). doi:10.1353/pmc.2018.0010

Sara Dominici, “Darkroom Networks: Mundane Subversiveness for Photographic Autonomy, 1880s-1900s.” photographies 14, no. 2 (2021): 265-286. doi.org/10.1080/17540763.2021.1877186

Pamila Gupta, “Of Sky, Water and Skin: Photographs from a Zanzibari Darkroom.” Kronos 46, no. 1 (2020): 266-280. http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_abstract&pid=S0259-01902020000100013

Bill Jay, Cyanide & Spirits: An Inside-Out View of Early Photography. Munich: Nazraeli, 1991.

Julie Park, My Dark Room: Spaces of the Inner Self of Eighteenth-Century England. University of Chicago Press, 2023.

Tanya Sheehan, Chapter 4 "A Matter of Public Health: Photographic Chemistry and the (Re)production of Healthy Bodies" in Doctored: The Medicine of Photography in Nineteenth-Century America. Penn State University Press, 2011.

Jennifer Tucker, Nature Exposed: Photography as Eyewitness in Victorian Science. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2006.

Jeff Wall, “Photography and Liquid Intelligence” In Jeff Wall: Selected Essays and Interviews, edited by Peter Galassi. Museum of Modern Art, 2007.

Darkroom projects

Autofoto (Rafael Hortala Vallve, David Boulogne, Marco Ferrari, Corinne Quin, 2009-present), a group of analogue photobooth experts who restore original auto-photography machines. On their website, there is a fascinating clip of the inside of a photobooth and the link to a video on how to operate and service the Photo-Me / Auto-Photo Dip and Dunk Chemical Analog Photobooth -- a mechanical darkroom.

Adam Bartos, Darkroom (2012). Photobook

Michel Campeau, Darkroom (2005-2006). Photographic series

John Cyr, Developer Trays (2010). Photographic series

John Cyr, Developer Abstractions (2015). Photographic series

Robert Marshall, The Sound of Film (2015). Short video

Abelardo Morell, Camera Obscura (1991-ongoing). Photographic series

Grace Weir, Darkroom (2015). Two simultaneous films, 7’30” duration.

Local Darkroom, a free community resource that brings together those who have a darkroom and those who would like local access.

The Sustainable Darkroom, an artist run project that explores environmentally friendly photographic darkroom practice.