There are so many reasons to sign the petition to Islington's best darkroom BDI – here are just a few
The modern world seems to be following a rule of compression. As digital dominates, physical space becomes redundant – if everything can be done on your computer or phone, then who needs the shop, the office, the darkroom? Why not scrap the lot and build luxury houses, where an individual – freed by technology, able to achieve anything from behind the security of his own firewall – may sit alone and get everything done with a click of the mouse. And as every amateur becomes a craftsman – through the canny application of iPhone apps and repeated viewing of How Tos on YouTube – the true masters are losing their clientele and their cachet. This is a disconcerting trend, and with the news that BDI, the infamous Islington darkroom run by Brian Dowling, is on the brink of closing, it is one that needs to be addressed.
"Brian Dowling is 'the great unsung hero of fashion photography'” — Dylan Jones
Dylan Jones described Brian Dowling as “the great unsung hero of fashion photography”. Founded in 1979, his studio began as a space for him to print the wedding photographs that were his primary business, but when Nick Knight strode in during the mid-80s, everything changed. Since then his darkroom has been a haven of creativity and innovation, with Brian pioneering printing techniques with Nick Knight, helping to cultivate Anton Corbijn’s unique monochrome aesthetic and working with the likes of Corinne Day, Juergen Teller and Glen Luchford. Knight equates Dowling’s work to the haute couture of photography – each image is instilled with a discernable humanity created by the hands-on processes involved.
However, times have changed. The rise and rise of digital processing have swept the budgets and deadlines out of the remit of analog, meaning that BDI may have to close. Brian’s supporters and fans have started a petition to save the shop in the hope of preserving a key chapter in the history of photographic production and we hope you will add your names too. Darkroom printing may seem like an anachronism in the glossy digital world, but as Sean O'Hagan wrote, what would be lost with BDI "is not just the presence that film and printing possessed, but the process that went with it, a kind of analogue alchemy that often helped turn the raw material into art."
Click here to sign the petition.
Words by Tish Wrigley
