383
‘performing all the operations upon the plates which were
formerly carried on in the dark now in a room lighted
through the media of various colours, such as red, orange,
green and yellow, but red I prefer, which, having very little
effect upon the plates covered with the sensitive coating,
allows the operator to see how to perform the work with-
out being obliged as before to remain in a dark room.
In his 1841 patent for the calotype, British Patent
No. 8842 ‘Photographic Pictures,’ however, William
Henry Fox Talbot made no mention of a dark room
or dark chamber. For the fi rst stage in the making of a
calotype, he refers only to the fact that ‘all this process
is best done in the evening by candlelight’ and suggests
drying the paper, once brushed with silver nitrate, ‘cau-
tiously at a distant fi re.’
Talbot, like many other travelling photographers who
came after him throughout the 1840s, 1850s and 1860s,
thought nothing of converting hotel bedrooms into make-
shift darkrooms for the preparation and later development
of their materials. Indeed, innkeepers in the 1850s were
known to keep towels and bed-linen, already stained with
silver nitrate, for when photographers came to stay.
Studio-based photographers had their darkrooms
adjacent to the studio itself—essential in the days of
wet collodion as the plate had to be coated and exposed
while still damp. Travelling photographers in the wet
plate era had to take their darkrooms with them on loca-
tion, and as the sensitivity of materials improved, the
requirements for an effective darkroom—either fi xed or
transportable—became more stringent.
Writing in The Silver Sunbeam in 1864, at the height
of the wet collodion era, Professor John Towler MD
offered his readers advice on the construction of their
darkroom and developing chambers
The Dark-Chamber and the ordinary work-room may
be constructed on the northern side of the glass-house,
the window of one being glazed with an orange-yellow
glass, in order to absorb the actinic rays, and the other
with common crown-glass. On the outside of the side
windows, small platforms are formed for the reception
of the printing frames(The making of prints, at the time, was in contact with
the negatives and exposed to daylight.)
The chamber intended for all operations of sensitizing,
commonly called the Dark-Room, ought to lie contiguous
to and open into the common operating or work-room of
the photographer; and both these rooms ought to open
directly into the glass-house...a single pane of orange-
yellow colored glass is all that is needed....This mode of
admitting light permits the progress of the development
to be distinctly watched much more effectively than by
refl ected light.
Four years later, William Lake Price, in his Manual
of Photographic Manipulation introduced the idea that
a well designed and well-maintained darkroom made
for greater productivity as well as ensuring the health
of the operator.Small and inconvenient dens may be made to do duty
on occasions, but if it be possible to obtain a certain
space, say sixteen feet by twelve, for this purpose, it will
be well bestowed, both in the increased convenience for
the production of the negatives, and for the health of the
operator, by the superior ventilation it affords...
... Let the darkroom contain only those things which
legitimately belong to it; let the shelves &c. be washed
frequently and kept free from dust, the sinks in the cleanest
condition, and the fl oor covered with oil-cloth, as being
the material with the most unbroken surface and most
easily purifi ed from dirt.As early as 1864, the suggestion that darkrooms be
fi tted with safe-lighting had been postulated—gas light-
ing held within yellow glass tubes suspended above the
developing sink.
For his 1854 journey through Yorkshire, and his pio-
neering expedition the following year to the Crimean
War, Roger Fenton converted a Canterbury wine-mer-
chant’s van for use as a mobile darkroom, fi tting yellow
glass panels in the side, while others used tents of yellow
canvas for the same purpose. Portable dark-tents which
could be carried as back packs were popular through-
out the 1850s, 1860s and 1870s, vying for popularity
against designs built around wheelbarrows and other
small wheeled vehicles.
With the advent of the dry plate, and the commercial
availability of mass-produced materials, the darkroom
lost one of its functions, but gained another—becoming
the printing chamber as well as the processing room.
Enlargers, powered by variety of light sources brought
printing indoors and relegated the large plate and the
daylight-exposed contact printing frame to the history
books for all but a few photographers.
John HannavySee also: Mayall, John Jabez Edwin; Daguerreotype;
Talbot, William Henry Fox; Wet Collodion Negative;
Wet Collodion Positive Processes; Price, William
Lake; and Fenton, Roger.Further Reading
Morley, Henry, “Photography” in Household Words, No. 156,
March 19 1853, 54–61, reprinted in History of Photography
Vol. 5, No. 1, January 1981.
Price, William Lake, A Manual of Photographic Manipulation,
London; John Churchill & Sons, 1868.
Towler, John, The Silver Sunbeam, New York; Joseph H Ladd,
1864.
Tissandier, Gaston (John Thomson, trans. and ed.), A History and
Handbook of Photography, London; Sampson, Low, Marston,
Searle & Rivington, 1878.