"photography is dead..."

**Tin Can** · 20-Dec-2016, 07:55

Originally Posted by pjd

Randy, thanks for sharing that link. First time I'd heard of that darkroom sharing site, there's someone fairly nearby (in Seoul) with a darkroom on there, maybe I can bridge the language divide and find a local LF pal around here (or maybe not, but I can try

Sorry to read that you didn't get a good response when you listed your darkroom, it's a generous offer to share resources like that.

One problem may have been the Ifford website map. Being world wide, with continent sized divisions, my listing was always buried under another local darkroom's location marker unless one zoomed in very close. We were only 1 mile apart.

I hope you find what you want.

**tgtaylor** · 20-Dec-2016, 11:13

Photography is not dead.

A better title to the thread is, "Real estate greed rolls over yet another enterprise."

I don't know if Rayko owns the building or not but in their case I think it was more of a lack of interest than anything else. When I was there earlier this month for an exhibition, very few people showed-up for the show. Maybe it was an anomaly (it was a rainy day and downtown SF traffic is worse than its ever been in my memory - the whole bay, in fact) but I got the distinct impression that their customer base went way down from what it was before notwithstanding that the Academy of Art has several buildings for art students in the immediate area. "Traditional" photography is dead but that doesn't bother me in the least because my photography, whether gelatin silver, kallitype, uranotype...etc., is handmade in the true tradition of the "artists."

Thomas

**agregov** · 20-Dec-2016, 11:15

I coincidently visited Rayko just two weeks ago--was down from Seattle to catch the Anthony Hernandez show at SFMOMA. I noticed on their website that they sell cut Endura C-printing paper. Stopped by to pick up a box of 25 sheets. First time there. Super nice people. Was impressed by the facility, they have a great digital setup (several flatbed scanners, Nikon 8000, two Imacons, one Hasselblad X1). Large inkjet printers. They had a shared B&W darkroom with around 10 stations and several private rooms for mural work. I was specifically interested in their color darkroom. They have a 50" Colex and about half a dozen enlargers, including an 8x10 enlarger for color optical printing. Curious, I asked how many regular color printers did they have? About 10. That's 10 in the size of a city like San Fransicso! Granted, I was there on a Friday night but there was no one printing in the digital lab, no one in the color and a handful of people in the B&W darkrooms. I'm sure the people that use the facility love it. But I was perplexed at its location in such a high rent area in San Fran. I'd guess they own their building but property taxes have got to be through the roof.

While there are more "images" being produced by smart devices to today than ever, people's need for handcrafted photographic prints doesnt' seem to have changed much. Interestingly, I caught several gallery shows in San Fransico and a fantastic Japenense photography show at SfMOMA, and (anacdoetally) I'd say about 80% of the prints I saw were either silver gelatin or chromogenic prints. Odd days.