Darkroom Colossus

For nearly 200 years now (depending on what date you choose to cite for its invention) photography has played a pivotal role in human life. Today nearly every person walks around with a camera in their pocket, integrated into the multipurpose device that is the modern smartphone. We may think nothing of pulling out our phone, snapping a few selfies, and tossing it back in our pocket, perhaps never looking at the images again. It is nothing to take 5, 10, 20 versions of a snapshot of a pet doing something cute. The vast majority of the images we produce will be consumed on a screen, often the same small smartphone screen we used in composing our snapshots. The work featured in Darkroom Colossus, produced by Harold Washington College students enrolled in Intermediate Darkroom Photography, goes directly against this method of production. This work is big, and this work is slow to produce. 

The process which produced the images featured in this exhibition is an arduous, time consuming, and precise one. Students had to learn to shoot with medium format and 4x5 cameras, process these larger formats of film, then print these massive images in the black and white darkroom using a specially modified enlarger and large troughs of photographic chemistry. Making a mural print in the darkroom is something that cannot be done alone, as the print itself is unwieldy, so each print you see was produced by students and support staff helping each other to complete these pieces. No part of these images was digitally produced, these are strictly darkroom and film-based works of art. Making a single mural print takes literally hours of work from the start of shooting to the final drying of the print. The ability to have photography students produce mural prints is a unique feature of the photography program at HWC, as most of the time students would have to attend a large university or fine arts school to have access to the equipment and facilities necessary to create this kind of work. This exhibition is a testament to both the quality of the photography program at HWC and, most importantly, to the creativity and dedication of our photography students. 

- Stephanie Burke, Curator