A walk through my dimroom
When I was in art school, there was only analog (film) photography. I spent all my time in the darkroom. It was damp and warm, always crowded, and smelled like decades of smokers with hit-or-miss personal hygiene. It took hours and multiple tries to make a print you were happy with, and you might spend weeks trying to achieve a look that you can get today with the click of a button. It may seem silly today to bother with a darkroom when you can just print a photo in 10 seconds with a digital printer, but many photographers are rediscovering the joy of analyzing and tinkering with a final print. We recognize that printing photography is as much a craft as shooting it.
After digital photography outpaced film photography, the traditional silver process darkroom became more and more difficult to maintain. You need to invest a lot of money in a well-ventilated and completely light-tight space with access to a continuous stream of hot and cold water. Chemicals are expensive to buy and are difficult and expensive to dispose of. Enlargers are hard to find, the bulbs are harder to find, and if it breaks down you will probably have to fix it yourself. With all these constraints, many photographers have turned back to the “alternative processes,” platinum-palladium, cyanotype, gum bichromate, etc. Most alt processes don’t require a darkroom, only a “dimroom.”
What is a dimroom?
Gum bichromate is a combination of gum arabic and potassium or aluminum dichromate with watercolor paint. The dichromate hardens the gum arabic when the combination is exposed to UV light, essentially trapping the watercolor paint in the gum arabic like amber. One of the things that really attracted me to this process was the fact that I didn’t need to invest in all chemicals and equipment to get full-color prints. And, as long as none of the light sources in my studio are UV, I can work with the lights on without fear of accidentally exposing my print, hence a “dim” room.
In classic darkrooms, your only light sources are the safelight and the enlarger.
However, there are still some practices I learned from the darkroom that you need to carry over to your dimroom.
Practice good studio hygiene
When working in a dimroom, you need to follow a lot of the same health and safety precautions as a darkroom. I’ve included links to all the things I’ve purchased over the years for my studio. I get a tiny commission if you purchase them through these links (like, tiny). The good thing about going through these links is that I’ve actually purchased these things and can vouch for them. So, there’s that.
Ventilation
You really should have good ventilation, or at the very least a P100 mask with a filter for vapors and a filter for particulates (if you’re mixing from powder). I do not have good ventilation, but I have a large window. When I get into the studio, I open the window and put a cheap fan in it to clear out the air. This also helps me regulate the temperature. If I’m laying emulsion on cyanotypes, I want the temperature above 70ºF (20ºC) and the humidity above 50%. If I’m laying emulsion on gum, I want it below 50%. I keep a dehumidifier running because I live in Seattle. You may need a humidifier to achieve proper humidity.
Safety Gear
You should keep UV safety goggles on hand for when you need to look at your UV light. I have a work apron and glasses that I put on as part of my “being in the studio” ritual, and this protects my clothes and eyes. I wear badass black gloves every time I handle the chemicals. My studio isn’t in my home, and I never have kids or animals visit it, but if yours is where any children or pets can access it please keep your chemicals locked up. Dichromate can kill you if you drink it, and it looks just like watermelon kool-aid.
Isolation
Just like in a classic darkroom, you will quickly realize you need to isolate water and chemistry to only one side of your workspace. You are working with expensive watercolor paper that you don’t want to ruin. Also, all alt processes use chemistry that, if cross-contaminated with other chemicals, can become toxic or lethal (yes, even cyanotype!). It’s important to keep wet and dry parts of your process separate. If you are using different processes in the same room, it’s also important to keep your individual processes isolated from each other.
The essentials. Water, caffeine, and music.
I am very strict about keeping all my chemicals on the wet side. I don’t bring food into my studio. I have water and tea only, and both are in covered containers that are kept far away from the wet side of my studio.
I think about how I used to put my bare hands into the developer, stop, and fix in the darkroom, and then I’d go smoke or eat and never wash my hands. I’m paying for it now (acute anemia, eye damage, mild lung damage) and I guess I had to learn this lesson the hard way. I won’t tell anyone else what they should or shouldn’t do, but I have met someone who accidentally poisoned themselves with dichromate by cross-contaminating their studio. It can happen and you could die. Okay, </rant>.
I’ll start with how I lay out my dry side, since that side is a little less complicated.
The dry side
Dry side: cutting mat, tracing pad, light box, library, color balanced task light
There are a few things I use my dry side for. Because I buy my paper in large rolls, I need a pretty large space to cut it into the sizes I need. I use a large Fiskars cutting mat so I can get accurate sizes. I use a clear quilting ruler and tear the paper instead of actually cutting it. That gives it a nice deckled edge that I think reinforces the appeal of hand-developed prints.
This is also where I have my light box. When you’re doing multi-layer prints, once you’ve done the first layer you need to line up the negative with the existing print. If you don’t do this successfully, your image will eventually get blurry, so this step is actually pretty important.
I splurged for the A2 sized pad. iPhone for comparison.
I’ve tried out all kinds of solutions, but settled on just eyeballing with a strong backlight. This light pad has a strong, adjustable LED light. It doesn’t produce heat or UV light, is thin and light, and very affordable. I’m sure someday I’ll try registering my prints, but it doesn’t work well in a contact print frame so I just use tape for now.
The UV light box is essential
In a darkroom, you use the enlarger to print your negative onto the light-sensitive paper. With alternative processes, your negative is the size of your print. You are sandwiching it against your paper as close as you can get it in either a contact print frame or a vacuum table. You can use the sun or a UV light as your light source. I use a UV light box because I live in Seattle where sunlight is… unreliable. Also, it’s always raining. I can’t leave paper sitting out in the rain or wait for it to stop raining to print.
I bought this lightbox from my good friend Ray Bidegain, another alt photographer working in photogravure, platinum and palladium printing.
I think UV light boxes are definitely the way to go because it’s a consistent light source and alt processes already have too many variables, but if you live in a sunny part of the world near the equator, you can get away with using the sun for quite a while. If you eventually decide to get a light box, they can run you anywhere from a couple hundred dollars to a few thousand dollars, or you can build your own. There are plenty of online sources for how to build a lightbox. Here’s one to get you started.
I also store all my books, extra rolls of paper, packaging and painting supplies, and negatives on the dry side.
The wet side
Alternative processes require a lot of the same tools you’d find in a darkroom; developing trays, tongs, a light source of some kind, and lots of water. With silver process you can buy pre-coated paper. In alt process, you have to lay your own emulsion on paper. The space to do this, and your sink and developing trays, are what define the size of your wet side.
My sink has brushes, pipettes, and mixing bowls drip-drying into it to minimize mess.
1. You need easy access to a sink, preferably with hot water
You will be constantly rinsing bowls and brushes so that the gum doesn’t hard in the bristles or the cracks and ruin them. You will need to dump out trays and refill them while you’re working, so it is essential that you have access to a sink. In my last studio the sink was out in the hallway and it was a pain. I spilled a lot of dirty water just trying to get in and out of the door with trays of water. If you’re able to, make sure the sink is in the room with you.
2. You need lots of room for trays
Cyanotype on left, gum bichromate on right.
I do not have two processes share the same trays. Each process needs at least two rinsing trays, so depending on your paper size you could get away with these for a while, but I think eventually you’ll want larger trays like these. My cyanotypes have the blue tray (duh) as well as a large tray for rinsing multiple or large prints. My gum printing uses all the other trays, primarily because it stains them pretty badly and I just don’t want to take chances that I’m cross contaminating. Notice in the picture, I have color-coded tongs and larger trays stored underneath my table.
3. You need a flat space for laying emulsion on paper
I splurged on this Harbor Freight workbench for my wet side and I don’t regret it at all. The pegboard and drawers have come in handy. It has a powerstrip attached to the side, which is a nice feature, and I put all my trays on the bottom shelf.
You’ll notice I have a Fiskers cutting mat here as well. This is my old one from my old studio where I didn’t have enough space to separate wet from dry. I used to lay emulsion on one side of the mat and flip it over for cutting paper. I can’t speak for all the alt processes, but with gum bichromate the working surface on your wet side will get stained, no matter how frequently you wash it down.
I purchased a piece of sheet metal that is the same size as the tabletop, and put it under this mat. That way, I was able to use magnets to hold paper down flat when I’m laying emulsion. As you get to the paper at the end of the roll, it can be curled pretty tight. Also, if you are presoaking your paper it’ll be really buckled and gnarly when it dries. So it’s good to have a way to keep it flat if there are still wrinkles after ironing it (yes, with an iron. It’s cotton after all!) I actually have this under the cutting mat on the dry side as well, but I had originally purchased two smaller pieces of sheet metal. They’re easier to manage, but there’s no need to buy online and wait. Just go to your local hardware store and get a piece cut to the size you need.
Image held down with magnets.
4. You need to dry your paper somewhere
I have three solutions for drying paper. I was originally drying everything with the hair dryer you see set on the cold setting, but there has been a lot of talk on forums about the hazards of gum bichromate or cyanotype fumes. Since my knowledge of chemistry would be called novice at best, and since I don’t have excellent ventilation in my studio, I’ve opted to use a drying cabinet and just wait it out. If you’re involved in alt process photography, you might as well get used to being patient because it is not known for giving instant gratification.
I purchased this paper cabinet from IKEA, and it has been perfect. As you can see, it also doubles as a work surface for another tray. I cut out a little piece of cardboard to block the light coming in from the handle cutout on each drawer, and lined them with black plastic. Maybe it’s overkill since I also hang black plastic on my windows, but it also protects the cabinet’s surface from the chemistry.
drying cabinet, more chemicals, and sink
Print drying in the IKEA drying cabinet
When prints are fully-rinsed, I hang them up to dry. It’s the simplest solution, and also exposes them to sunlight, which helps cyanotypes turn their final blue color and clear the last of the dichromate.
The hooks I use have a cup hook at one end and a clamp at the other. I can hang keys on the cup hook and clamp this to the bottom edge of the paper to weigh it down and help my paper dry flat.
Conclusion
As you can see, I’ve invested quite a bit in my studio over the years, but you really don’t have to. If you’re just interested in trying it out to see if it’s right for you, you can print great cyanotype prints with just a piece of heavy glass, a negative (or any transparent material), the sun, and a bit of water. It’s all a matter of how much you want to invest in it.
There are a lot of other little things you’ll need to get for a fully-stocked and ready to go studio, such as brushes and proper storage, which I’ll include in part II of this post.