The Light Farm is a Creative Cooperative - an experiment in bridging the past to the future.  We will be pushing, prodding, and encouraging a new kind of dialogue on the subject of handcrafted silver gelatin emulsions. We are attempting nothing less than a renaissance of a craft long ago turned over to commercial interests, seemingly out of the hands of the home artisan. In doing this, we are staring straight into the bloodshot eyes of Paradox.

Photographers are at confounding crossroads. As the traditional (i.e. commercially manufactured) materials are being discontinued, some photographers are almost paralyzed by nostalgia. At the same time, digital is easy and 'perfect'. We are left with the common mentality that individuals are incapable of making a product that competes materially with what Kodak produced on its assembly lines, or that competes with digital for our concept of time efficiency. (It takes up to a week to produce one three-color silvergum print. I don't even know how many GB of memory cards I could fill up in that length of time.)

The home darkroom is disappearing and it's going fast. Although change is inevitable and even though the darkroom that yesterday got remodeled into a computer room can always be remodeled again, the casual intimacy that so many photographers, even hobbyists, had with the materials and processes is also being lost, and can't be so readily resurrected. So...

Back to the Paradox: Most of the discussions going on today about making silver gelatin emulsions are based of the premise that we must replicate Kodak and its cousins. They take off on such flights of mechanical and technological fancy that they remain just that — fancy. The home studio can't compete with the Kodak campus. On the other hand, many of the materials and skills that Abney (c.1880) and Wall (c.1920) took for granted are no longer available to us. Accept both realities — and maybe even indulge in a little rejoicing. We are citizens of the 21st century. There are no creative constraints.

The Light Farm will embrace the idea of learning by doing. We will enter the creative space as inventors and explorers, as though going into undiscovered territory. "What if" dialogues will come after the hands-on work. We won't be weighed down by expectations other than our own need to learn and create. We will use and love all the materials available to us today. We will share openly and readily what we have personally learned by doing. We will keep to ourselves opinions that are not backed up by personal experience and verified by a product we ourselves have produced and are willing to share with all. There will be no gurus, no experts.

We are all starting at the beginning and moving forward together.

The Light Farm is moving ahead a little sooner than originally planned and in a different direction than I had hoped when I started this. In February, 2008, I fully expected that the site would be fundamentally different by February, 2013. I had no way of knowing, of course, what the difference would be. The future of photography was in a state of profound flux.

The future came far faster and with far more changes than in my wildest imagination. Home and public darkrooms are all but gone. I can’t begin to keep up with the list of disappearing and reappearing (often under a different name) products — including, amazingly, cameras.

Almost five years ago my crystal ball got a few things right but many more things absolutely wrong.

I never guessed how astoundingly excellent digital cameras would be, or how totally they would “become” mainstream photography. Film and darkroom printing have inarguably moved into the alternative processes side of photography. Even then, it’s often with a digital element. It is a challenge for analog materials manufacturers and suppliers to keep photographers engaged with film and wet-processed prints. Workshops for historical printing processes are finding it challenging to fill enough slots to run. Whether or not the ease and excellence of digital imaging is a factor, or competition from other alternative processes, or the influence of some broader cultural zeitgeist, there is currently little interest among photographers in making silver gelatin emulsions.

It has been over a year since there has been a new research contributor on The Light Farm. On photography forums, interest in handcrafted silver gelatin emulsions has fallen off — despite the amazing and unforeseen (at least to me) quality and usability of handcrafted film, plates, and paper. With the benefit of hindsight and six years’ experience, it’s a little embarrassing to realize that I, too, was brainwashed into believing superb quality was out of reach of amateurs in our home darkrooms. I expected we’d top out at early 1900s technology, but we’re at least 30 years beyond that. Today I can put a piece of film I made myself on a light table next to a similar piece of commercial film and be hard pressed tell the difference. I love going out of the house carrying a camera loaded with my own film. I have been immensely enjoying handheld camera street photography. Printing on silver-rich paper is almost a religious experience. I can’t imagine anything better. But apparently I am alone. I have failed at convincing others. That is what I got most wrong.

So, where does this leave The Light Farm? First, the whole site is in desperate need of time and attention. Basically, I need to stop posting new work until I can reorganize the current information into a more cogent “1st Edition.” Back in the day of traditional books, this is the point where the draft would be sent to the editor for pre-publication polishing. Electronic publications should have no less a standard. So, I will not be adding new research for a while. (Months? Years? I don’t know at this point. I plan on doing a lot more photography and a lot less sitting at a computer.) I made panchromatic film yesterday. Like everything involved with this adventure, it was easier than I expected. This will let me put together a tri-pack and hopefully dabble in an autochrome-like process. Enlarging paper is done, as is a new and foolproof gaslight paper that can be thrown together in a temporary darkroom. The Fates willing, all these things will be in “TLF, 2nd Edition”. Until then there is a bounty of things to play with — today — on The Light Farm. I will try to make the information more easily useable. I hope others will be undertaking independent research. Fingers crossed, the 2nd edition will be able to add many new contributors.