Notes from the darkroom.

#9: on darkness

The dark was there first, and it never meant well.

I was born into it. No frame, no light to follow, no one calling my name. I learnt early what it meant to walk without a compass. I built one out of instinct, stubbornness, rage.

The dark takes and takes until you learn how to use its weight.

Every life that failed to print, every light that hit wrong, left its shadow in me. You don’t wait for light; you work with what little you can find, making shapes out of the absence. That’s survival.

Some treat the dark like a place you visit. For me, it was home.

I learned to hear texture, to feel outlines, to move by instinct instead of direction. When you live there long enough, your eyes stop asking permission.

Photography came later. Not as a hobby, but as a truce.

The darkroom followed the same rules I did. We understood each other, lived by the same chemistry. Together we learned what to hide and what to reveal.

Still, the old struggle followed. Nothing came easy. The world outside the red light had no mercy. But inside, there was rhythm, a pulse I could trust.

Years went by.

More lives, more test strips. Each one a small attempt to balance exposure and endurance. I didn’t become whole; I became used to reinventing.

And somewhere between exhaustion and acceptance, the dark stopped being punishment.

It’s still paved with bad intentions, but I know the place. It’s where the image waits, and where I’ve learned to wait with it.

The dark was my enemy.

I learned to live with it, to work in it, and finally to draw light from it.

It’s still where everything begins
the light, the image,
and whatever I’ve managed to become.