The Darkroom Project | India in 35mm
In 2009, I scoured the streets of New Delhi for a photographic enlarger. I had just completed a darkroom course in my hometown Calgary and was incredibly inspired by the work of my teacher, George Webber. I intended to set up my very own darkroom somewhere in India, but I would first need to find the supplies.
During my search, I met a father and son who owned a photo studio in the heart of Connaught Place. Out of a dusty storeroom laced in cobwebs, they exhumed an old machine of the likes I had never seen before. It was the only darkroom equipment I had so far found in India, so I bought it. Before leaving the studio, Shanti Prakash Jain, a freedom fighter in the 1940s, handed me a paper envelope with the words’ Memories are Forever’ printed on it in faded capital letters. Inside was a beautiful film photograph of India’s first post-independence prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. It felt as if my project received a blessing from the entire nation and so it hung next to my enlarger in Udaipur, where the darkroom was finally set up.
Over the following two years, I traversed the country’s length and breadth photographing people and places, always returning to my little home in Rajasthan to develop the film and print the photographs. It was an incredibly challenging project, not only for the time it took for those lived moments to become physical pictures in my hands but also for the conditions I lived that presented obstacles I had not previously encountered. However, if I know anything about India, it is that what it lacks in convenience, it makes up in ingenuity. And so, I found my way around everything and produced the best body of work I could with what I had.
Returning to analog photography allowed me the opportunity to slow down, to be intentional and measured in what I chose to photograph, and to cultivate a deep appreciation for a particular image vs clicking through multitudes. The result of this project continues to be some of my most treasured work.