Nostalgia

times square, originally uploaded by Matthew Singer.

I’m going to start this post by sharing a few photos I shot on Kodak T-Max black and white film way back in 2001 during my freshman year of college.

Film.

Back then, my little school of 1600 had a darkroom that the photo club and art department shared. It was in the basement of one of the dorms. When the art department got its brand new building, it got a brand new state-of-the-art darkroom, and the club took complete ownership of the old darkroom. I’m not sure what’s left of the facility in the basement of Baldwin, but I do know that the intro to photography class is still being taught using the darkroom in the art building.

It was my perception that art departments at all schools taught photography on film before teaching digital techniques. Apparently I was wrong. The University of Idaho is considerably larger than Drew and yet there are no photography classes offered. Furthermore, there is no darkroom available for student use. This shocks me. How can a school overlook the basic photographic processes and principles? How can a school overlook photography as an art? And why the hell did they have to disassemble their darkroom when students may want to use it on their own?

I was looking forward to being able to develop and print, but I see that it will have to wait some more.

Until then, please enjoy some shots from the past.