Around the 2014-2015 summer break I started dabbling around in a small darkroom I had made in my parents laundry - from there I was hooked! Unfortunately university was some 6 hours from home and I was living on campus with absolutely no room, I couldn’t take my darkroom with me. Or could I?
I am really not afraid of working in small spaces, perhaps due to my irish/italian stature so I got to work devising just how small I could make a functioning darkroom for prints up to 8x10 in size. Taking some inspiration from several small wet plate darkrooms made from black-out cloth or fishing tents the next logical choice was something not entirely legal. Enter the hydroponic grow tent, this idea has been chucked around the web but I never found anybody actually having done it yet. So I thought I’d have a crack at it…
The ‘spaceship’ Prototype 2015
These tents came in a range of sizes from dodgy eBay suppliers, I managed to score one for less than AUD 50. The size was 1msq by 2m tall ample enough room for me. Just to give some context I was living in a 6 share dorm with ‘shoebox’ quarters aprox 3x2m floor area, yeh, tiny. Now there was some dicussion on the net regarding the internal mylar lining and how to deal with all those reflections when printing. Some suggestions were draping extra fabric or painting which I thought was not ideal. After a bit of ingenuity the solution is quite simple really, invert it! It solves the door problem too (zippers now on inside - nobody can accidentally open it on you) and it also helps with the heat. I still wouldn’t use something like this outdoors in the sun though. A big factor was ventilation of fresh air, I had seen a few wet plate tents using “passive” vents - this is really not safe in such a confined space with chemicals. You can see I have simply mounted two fans to the duct inlets/outlets. You can get away with just one fan bringing fresh air in to create positive pressure it would probably be even better, but please get a fan and avoid suffocating yourself. Overall the whole thing takes about 30-45mins to set up.
Into the dark..
As you can see there is just enough room for single tray processing and a small 35mm enlarger (LPL 330D). Right next to the enlarger is a spot for the clone NOVA slot processing unit (another blog post). At the enlarger base is a small UV light box for alt process work. Drying rack under the counter and overhead hangers. No plumbing I would just bring a tray out to an external washer in the communal bathroom. That said it was quite comfortable and certainly beat having no darkroom at all although I designed it around a hybrid workflow using digital negatives, so sessions wouldn’t be longer that half an hour at a time. For traditional printing it is a bit of a squeeze.
All packed down and ready to transport!
My flatmates tolerated it rather they just kept asking for some of my stash! Luckily I worked for maintenance and was in charge of room inspections so not hitches there. As you can see it packs down to quite a respectable size, the tent bag, table bag and tub with the enlarger with all the tools, chemicals and paper. Ideally you would use this kind of set up as a portable, semi-permanent solution you could set up in a bedroom or such. After having transported it a few times back and forth the tent started to stress at the seems (flipping it put more strain around the frame). Just required some gaffer tape to block the pinholes on the edges but what can you expect for a chinese tent at that price! Some people have asked If you could travel with this tent in the bush and I’d say really isn’t robust enough for that kind of repeat set up/down action.
Hope you have enjoyed the read, you could say this was the initial seed that has grown into The Container Lab. There are many more posts to follow so please check back I will updating via instagram. If you have any questions or want know more details about this project don’t hesitate to leave a comment or contact me via email.
Happy printing!