I did it. I built my darkroom. Finally. It has taken some time, but I now know how it feels to “see the image appear,” as so many have excitedly proclaimed. I now have a space devoted to magic and mistakes. As I’ve previously noted, my boyfriend generously allotted me the space for a darkroom in the second bedroom of his new apartment. Said room divides its time between man-cave and developing-den, thusly wafting aromas mixed of machine oil and fixer about his home.

It only seemed right and [probably] poetic that the first photographs I chose to print in my darkroom were also ones from the first set of negatives I processed by hand: the large format, 4×5 portraits of my Grandmother from my personal project/series, “Tributaries Tickle her Toes.”