[Leica] Re: Would you start a wet darkroom today?

[Byron Rakitzis <leica@rakitzis.com>]

Okay, I've seen some posts go by on this but I can't resist putting in
my two cents:

To the person who compared darkrooms to slide rules: I grew up in the
70s just as calculators were displacing slide rules, and I would have
dearly loved to have had more of a taste of that old technology. No one
ever taught me how to use one and it's certainly a regret of mine.

(To those who saw the movie "Apollo 13": it was certainly a "period
piece" in that both heavy smoking and slide rules were featured in
Mission Control!)

Anyway, traditional photography is to me a piece of technological
*AND* artistic heritage which for a child has the significance, say,
of painting with oils or setting type with your own printing press:
that kind of getting-your-hands-messy creativity for which computers
are a ghostly substitute.

I didn't grow up with a darkroom at home, but my dad did a few things
for me, such as introducing me to pinhole cameras and a brownie which
he owned and used as a child. Even as a 10 year old, I could appreciate
the nostalgia of loading up rollfilm into a bakelite camera!!

Finally, if you happen to think that wet darkrooms are destined for
the rubbish heap of history, then I should think that is EVEN MORE an
incentive for you to expose your child to this technique.

To the person who said that you should nudge your child towards the
future: who says that parenthood is a kind of vocational training? I
hope to pass on to my children the best things I know about in life.
The best art, the best literature, the best music. Given our societal
obsession with computers, I rest easy knowing that my children will
easily out-learn anything I happen to know about computers.

I'll stop now before I really get carried away. :-) Thanks for your
patience.

Byron.