Grind

The lab had three color darkrooms, each measuring about 10 x 7 feet. A counter ran along one side of the room and the feed tray to the print processor was located on the opposite side. Three enlargers stood on the counter and at one end of the room, mounted on the wall, was a mural enlarger that projected images onto the floor for the big enlargements. Under the counter were boxes of color paper in a variety of sizes, and somewhere was always a radio. The lab worked two shifts: daytime from 8:00 to 4:00 and evening from 4:00 to 12:00. The processors rolled 16 hours a day.

A shift went like this: the manager or assistant manager sorts the job orders and divides them up between the darkrooms. I go through my pile, make sure each job has all the necessary materials, ask questions if I have any, and get to work. One job would go on each enlarger, unless it was real big, then I'd run it on two or three enlargers to clear it fast. Next, I'd set the easel for the size of the prints requested, place the first negative in the enlarger, set up the enlargement, focus, estimate a color balance and exposure, expose a test print, and turn around and feed the paper into the processor. Then I'd do the same for the other two enlargers and on the mural enlarger, where I'd print the blow-ups - anything from 11x14 to 30x40 inches. As color printing requires complete darkness, nearly all of this was accomplished with the lights out. Once I had fed the processor with test prints, the next step was to head outside to see the results.

The test prints roll out of the processor developed and dry in about five minutes. I'd evaluate the exposure and color balance of each print, and then head back into the darkroom, make corrections on each enlarger, expose more test prints, or if I think I had it right, craft the final print, shoving each paper into the processor and then it was back outside to see what happened. This was the basic workflow - set up, test print, evaluate, correct, final print. In an average shift I'd make between 80 and 160 final prints, moving back and forth, in and out, again and again and again, pupils dilating and contracting all day long.

All this was quite a change for me. I had spent the previous ten years learning to meticulous craft only one picture at a time - spending hours, sometimes even days in the darkroom perfecting one image. My art school training hadn't prepared me for the fact that what I thought of as a carefully practiced art, could and was transformed into an assembly line process. I couldn't believe the economy of movement, the intensity of concentration, and the instantaneous judgments I saw from my colleagues on the first day. Of course, this was because I had never really printed before.

The first few weeks were frustrating. I had to break old habits, learn to work fast and hard, and without making mistakes. There was no time for contemplating what to do next - just expose and go. Diagnosing corrections and trying to keep all the exposure times and color balances straight among all the enlargers, negatives and prints was nearly impossible. At first, before I got used to keeping it all in my head, I had little pieces of paper everywhere with notes of exposure times and color balances to help me remember, which usually just ended up making everything even more confusing. The first day printing on my own I probably managed only 20 prints; a pitiful showing and yet I remember being exhausted. But, with each day I got better, faster, and the job became easier.

Learning to correctly see and evaluate color was the most important and valuable skill. Generally folks aren't too interested in the quality of light reflected off of objects or people; usually our day-to-day concern is use value. It's rare, for example, to look closely at a door, noting the pattern of wood grain or the color and luster of the finish. Rather, our central care is where the handle is, whether the hinges swing in or out, and what we might find on the other side. The same applies to people - we look at a person in hopes of identifying them, not to ponder the color of the skin under their eyes. Ask most anyone and they will tell you that tires are black, that cement is grey, that white is white, none of which is true. Just go outside and look around, see for yourself: tires are, depending on the light conditions, a murky flat purplish blue or a dull dark muddy brown, cement comes in a wide range of hues spanning the entire spectrum, and white is never ever just white, always tinged warm or cool depending on the surroundings. A big part of printing fast was to know what the world actually looks like - a study in the surface of things.