Showerthought: I used to think a perfectly clean negative was the only goal, but now I embrace the dust and hair as part of the print's story.

After a friend in Portland saw a print with a tiny hair in the corner and called it 'hauntingly real,' I stopped fighting my old Durst enlarger's dust issues and just let the artifacts stay, which changed my whole darkroom process last fall.

3 comments

3 Comments

hugo6451mo ago

My old darkroom had a leaky pipe that left water spots on everything. After a while, those spots just became part of the final look, like a fingerprint. Fighting for a totally clean print can suck the life right out of it.

drew_carr671mo ago

That "hauntingly real" comment sounds like someone just being nice. I fight dust and hair every time, it's a sign of a messy darkroom. A clean negative and a clean print are the whole point of the craft, otherwise you're just making flawed work.

the_river19d ago

Yeah, I was just reading this old interview with a photographer who said his best prints always had one tiny flaw he couldn't fix... a hair or something. He called it the "breath" of the darkroom. The fight for total clean feels like you're trying to make a machine copy, not a hand made thing. Sometimes the struggle shows, and that's okay.