American photographer W. Eugene Smith loved to go to his darkroom (it was a mess) with a bottle of Scotch. He would then turn on his stereo and work on printing a negative.

I understand this minus the Scotch, of course. In the beginning of my interest in working in a darkroom, in 1963, I would go to the one at the University of the Americas on the Toluca/Mexico City highway with my friend Robert Hijar. He was studying for a fine arts degree so that gave him access to the darkroom. I was smuggled in. To get there we took a second class Flecha Roja diesel bus that had so many forward gears that when it stopped for passengers it took it a while to get to cruising speed.

In that darkroom Hijar would bring a reel to reel tape recorder. Our fave recording was Focus with Stan Getz and Eddie Sauter.

I'm Late, I'm Late - Focus

The water in the room was so cold we had to warm it up with water from a kettle in order to have that all-important developer at 20 degrees Celsius. As soon as we discerned a vibration we would stop our activity with the enlargers. This meant that the bus, which we called the Toluca Rocket was on its way up the hill (to Toluca). The room would shake and I swear dust would dislodge itself from the white (!) brick wall and deposit itself on our negatives and enlarger.


Now three years and a bit more in our Kitsilano home my Kerrisdale darkroom is but a memory. Its particular smells (that fixer, that selenium toner) are still vivid in my olfactory recollection. The equivalent endeavour that so pleased Smith and yours truly is now experienced in a clean room overlooking the deck where I can hear Rosemary snipping with scissors. She is deadheading some of her perennials and our roses.

I sit in my comfortable bench with my monitor in front of me and I look at negatives from my files, particularly the ones with those contact sheets of yore.

One of the pictures here perhaps would have never seen the light of day. It is a grossly overexposed Kodak b+w Infrared Film. The wonders of scanners is that they can bring back detail that is embedded that was beyond the range of my German Componon enlarger lens.

There is a bit of that old Roman Catholic guilt involved. This is so much fun that something wrong must happen. Will it not?

And who would know that as I finish this I am hearing Focus on YouTube?