A box for a canister of film sits in the darkroom in Stamp Student Union.
It’s a simple case of out with the old and in with the new.
That’s how W.C. Richardson, University of Maryland art department chairman, describes the closing of the darkroom in Marie Mount Hall, which costs about $24,000 per year to operate, this summer.
“It’s a shame to lose a darkroom when you got one, but it was falling apart,” Richardson said, adding that about 20 photography students used it. “We didn’t have the money to maintain it.”
The art department will instead use the resources allocated to the darkroom to renovate and upgrade its digital photography program, he said.
This semester marks the first time in at least 30 years that this university, once home to two darkrooms, will have none operating on the campus, mirroring a national trend.
Darkrooms, once the only way to develop photos, have been replaced by the rise of digital photography and Photoshop, which give people a cheaper, quicker way to take and edit pictures. This push for a digital focus has caused more and more universities to close their darkrooms, said Glenn Carpenter, University Photographers’ Association of America president.
Last spring, the University of Southern Mississippi closed its darkroom and in 2011, Johns Hopkins University replaced its room with a digital lab.
The darkroom in Stamp Student Union’s Art and Learning Center also closed last spring, citing a similar lack of funds and interest.
“If you look at our darkroom usage over the past five years, we have had no more than two or three people request at a time to use it, and the last time we had open hours, we had no one request to use it,” said Joseph Calizo, Stamp’s assistant director for engagement and activities.
While there are no photography classes being offered this semester, the art department plans to offer at least three more photography classes at all levels of expertise next fall. The current darkroom space in Marie Mount will be replaced by a photography lab complete with printers and computers.
The department is also considering a class focused on taking pictures with a cell phone or other unexpected devices, said art professor Hasan Elahi.
Elahi, a photographer whose work has been shown across the nation, said he hasn’t used a darkroom since the ’80s or early ’90s, and many of his colleagues don’t use them either.
“We have a responsibility to be relevant and be timely with our curriculum,” Elahi said.
Darkrooms are still essential to the artistry of photography, just as mass production of pottery hasn’t ruined the art of ceramics, Carpenter said. And darkrooms are one of the best ways for students to learn photography fundamentals like exposure or shutter speed, he said.
“Art schools like Columbia find that our students who transfer there do much better having darkroom classes,” said Carpenter, a professor at Moraine Valley Community College.
Plus, he said, he’s just plain nostalgic.
“I miss the darkroom, a sort of magic happened [there],” Carpenter said. “You turned the red light on and nobody knew what happened in there. Then you’d come out and have a photograph.”
