"photography is dead..."

[tgtaylor]

"LONG LIVE PHOTOGRAPHY..."


From RayKo proprietor Stuart Kogod

Dear friends of RayKo,

Today I'm stepping out of the shadows to discuss the future of RayKo Photo Center. The operation simply isn't generating enough income. As the proprietor, I will need to make some significant changes as I can no longer carry it alone. My intention here is to proceed with you informed and hopefully in a position to affect a favorable outcome.

My strongest hope is that RayKo will be able to continue, but under the patronage of another individual. Or under the patronage of a consortium of individuals which could, or could not, include myself. With the right person at the helm, someone who has business skills and fire in their belly, RayKo could be a successful enterprise.

Unless new patronage emerges, RayKo Photo Center will close to the public on April 30, 2017.

In the meantime, starting February 1, 2017, our hours of operation will be:

Tues, Wed, Thur 12:30 - 9:30
Sat, Sun 10:00 -7:00
Mon, Fri Closed


Thereafter...
Workshops, Classes, Summer Camps, Teen Programs and our Artist-In-Residence Program will continue as well as our digital printing and imaging services.

Our 10th Annual International Juried Plastic Camera Show will be the final gallery exhibition ending on April 23, 2017.

Whatever the future holds, I'd like to thank you for joining me in this wild and fulfilling ride. I will try my hardest to continue to keep you informed. Please contact me with any inquiries about the details and logistics of the business.

Sincerely,

Stuart Kogod
proprietor
stuart@raykophoto.com


Received in my inbox at 5:12 this afternoon.

Thomas

[Tin Can]

Never heard of the place.

Looked it up.

Looks fantastic!

Live long and...

[Pfsor]

"LONG LIVE PHOTOGRAPHY..."

Received in my inbox at 5:12 this afternoon.

Thomas

At 5:12 ? What happened at 5:15 then?

[BrianShaw]

So are you going to buy the place, Thomas, and save photography from dying?

"Another one bites the dust" seems more apropos.

[seabee1999]

I received the same email yesterday. Rather sad when I read it. RayKo is a great facility and the folks there are very nice. I hope a buyer or consortium is able to take over.

R/
Dave

[LabRat]

Or find some corporate sponsors, or grant $$$...

I wish them well...

Steve K

[tgtaylor]

I was at a reception there earlier this month for the opening of the current exhibition of works by Steve Harper (think "Nocturnes") and David Wolf. David's work was quite interesting. He got a bunch some expired (he said from around 2000) RA-4 paper, developed one sheet in each box to see what was the color shift, and then printed the image onto a fresh sheet from that box with an enlarger. Each print was at least 16x20 ad all were matted and mounted in frames and for sale at around $4k each. Click on the link and scroll down to the Side Gallery on the Current Show tab. http://raykophotocenter.com/current-show-b

Thomas

[angusparker]

Great place. Sad loss if it closes. We also have the Harvey Milk center in SF - that will likely be the last public photography darkrooms outside of the art schools.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[bob carnie]

I imagine San Francisco rent is really high, like Toronto a similar building 401 Richmond Street which houses Gallery 44 a facility much like Rayko is currently under property tax review. Basically as the story goes such review is based
on the highest property usage, and then passed on to the owners to pay and ultimately pass on to each space within . The owners of 401 took an old building filled it with willing art groups, many publicly funded or trying to get money from the same sources.
Now their rent is going through the roof, as King and Spadina is one of the hottest space markets in the GTA .

This happened in The Distillery District and many other areas of Toronto , what is the solution ? , not sure as long as the building market is so hot , these kinds of situations keep on happening. I feel for Rayko but I doubt any one group will come in and save the day for photography.

Space is the single most expensive commodity in running a business, hydro and services next, when they start getting out of whack based on the Gross amount any facility can produce , a sad demise is inevitable.

[Tin Can]

Great place. Sad loss if it closes. We also have the Harvey Milk center in SF - that will likely be the last public photography darkrooms outside of the art schools.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I had my Darkroom listed on the Ilford http://www.localdarkroom.com/ from the start, maybe 3-4 years.

No cost, bring paper.

Not one call or email is all that time, until recently. The message was not positive. I removed my listing, the darkroom remains open to people who know me.

[bob carnie]

I had my Darkroom listed on the Ilford http://www.localdarkroom.com/ from the start, maybe 3-4 years.

No cost, bring paper.

Not one call or email is all that time, until recently. The message was not positive. I removed my listing, the darkroom remains open to people who know me.

I built a rental darkroom with five working stations , huge sink and put it out there for rent... 3 people in one year ... 2001era... never again.

[Tin Can]

I imagine San Francisco rent is really high, like Toronto a similar building 401 Richmond Street which houses Gallery 44 a facility much like Rayko is currently under property tax review. Basically as the story goes such review is based
on the highest property usage, and then passed on to the owners to pay and ultimately pass on to each space within . The owners of 401 took an old building filled it with willing art groups, many publicly funded or trying to get money from the same sources.
Now their rent is going through the roof, as King and Spadina is one of the hottest space markets in the GTA .

This happened in The Distillery District and many other areas of Toronto , what is the solution ? , not sure as long as the building market is so hot , these kinds of situations keep on happening. I feel for Rayko but I doubt any one group will come in and save the day for photography.

Space is the single most expensive commodity in running a business, hydro and services next, when they start getting out of whack based on the Gross amount any facility can produce , a sad demise is inevitable.

Same thing happened to our Artist owned Condo building. Taxes skyrocketed, as millionares moved into our former ghetto which still has daily shootings. We even had a self imposed form of 'sales price control', which I just helped eliminate so we can sell at market price. When taxes jumped the idealists changed philosophy.

I am a realist....

[Jac@stafford.net]

Same thing happened to our Artist owned Condo building. Taxes skyrocketed, as millionares moved into our former ghetto which still has daily shootings. We even had a self imposed form of 'sales price control', which I just helped eliminate so we can sell at market price. When taxes jumped the idealists changed philosophy.

I am a former Chicagoan, and like Randy Moe I lived through cases where endowed buyers raised rents just enough to force out the impoverished, made 'cool' renovations and advertised to us young artists to move in, and only five years later we had to flee due to enormously inflated rents.

Thus the definition of Gentry, oh, and greed.
.

[Leigh]

...the darkroom remains open to people who know me.
Where?

- Leigh

[Tin Can]

Chicago


Where?

- Leigh

[Leszek Vogt]

Randy, how do you survive this ? If one listens to the news, there seem to be hail of bullets (every weekend in Chic)....and making enlargements/development may not be the first thing on people's minds.


Les

[Jac@stafford.net]

Randy, how do you survive this ? If one listens to the news, there seem to be hail of bullets (every weekend in Chic)....and making enlargements/development may not be the first thing on people's minds.

I'm a former Chicagoan. Believe me, the incidents are localized and pretty predictable. Randy Moe lives in a highly desirable area. He's very smart, hip, street wise and got in there early. A great neighborhood, a great building. It also helps that he worked in a profitable hands-on field before retiring.

Randy Moe is one of my admired.
.

[Tin Can]

Randy, how do you survive this ? If one listens to the news, there seem to be hail of bullets (every weekend in Chic)....and making enlargements/development may not be the first thing on people's minds.


Les

I just spent hours writing and rewriting a reply.

It became a free verse poem.

I feel I cannot post it here or anywhere.

[Jac@stafford.net]

Photography is not dead.

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

[pjd]

I had my Darkroom listed on the Ilford http://www.localdarkroom.com/ from the start, maybe 3-4 years.

No cost, bring paper.

Not one call or email is all that time, until recently. The message was not positive. I removed my listing, the darkroom remains open to people who know me.

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.

[Tin Can]

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]

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]

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.

[Leigh]

If one listens to the news, there seem to be hail of bullets
That's a convenience.

You use the muzzle blasts to time your agitation intervals.

- Leigh