By Evelyn Freja
For twenty-two dollars an hour, Joy gets to spend her weekdays working deep
beneath the surface where nothing reaches her, not even a stale breeze. Sunlight
cannot penetrate down there. Neither does the sound of noisy tourists flip-flopping their
way across town, nor the cacophony of endless traffic flowing through the streets
accompanied by the usual angry shouts and honking. It is just Joy. Joy and the
community darkroom she runs. During the summer months, not even the scent of warm
dog urine permeating the cracks in the sidewalk makes it into their lab. It is a safe
haven, empty of any unwanted outside invitations. Void even of all the pesky pixelated
campaigns and images bombarded at them on every corner.
Joy can’t seem to escape them anywhere; they began popping up during the
beginning of her youth, spreading faster than a bad bout of chickenpox prickling its way
across her skin. Careful advertisements that had been slipped between the pages of
magazines, with perfectly glitzy, calculated faces staring back at her wanting her to
spend more, more, more. Even during three-minute commercial breaks on the telly,
selling curated promises of being eternally youthful, thin, beautiful, healthy– you name
it. The things being sold were different, but the images always looked the same: a fake,
careful composition of what life should be. With no reception in the basement darkroom
and only spotty wifi, it was easy to escape the whims of the world above.
The first time Joy sees Melissa, she’s carrying a stack of binders full of film
negatives and an industrial sized box of printing paper and her skin is tinged a painful
red from the glow of the overhead lamp. As a darkroom technician, Joy’s seen students
come and go. Most, from the local university six blocks over who want to dabble in the
traditional arts. Like hungry birds, they swoop in, eager to develop their own film
negatives, to print their own images, only to discard the practice once their semesters
end. Analogue photography, it turns out, is an expensive and timely hobby. Most just
don’t have the stomach for it.
So when Joy first sees Melissa, with that gleam in her eyes, and the bounce in
her step, Joy thinks, Yes. Yes, this one is different. Over the next few weeks, Joy learns
a lot about her, though they speak almost no words to one another, except when
Melissa asks her to repair the stuck lens from her film enlarger. “Things are grumpy
here,” Joy explains, wondering if Melissa will care that this little hole in the ground is
showing just as many signs of wear and tear as Joy herself. If the younger
photographer cares, she doesn’t say. Instead, she thanks Joy with a whisper of a smile
before going back to pouring over her film negatives. Joy and the rest of the world,
instantly forgotten. Photographers like this one are hard to come by these days, Joy
thinks. It’s a breath of fresh air, mixed with the heavy onset of film chemicals burning
through her nose hairs. It’s clear Melissa is here for the same reasons Joy first started
to come here: to selfishly create.
Joy finds out that Melissa has a twin, a gangly looking girl that is a carbon copy
of the young photographer, except her sister has hair chopped to her shoulders. Joy
finds out that Melissa has a scraggly dog and that her favorite beverage is HI-C
Hawaiian Punch. Throughout the early months of Fall into Winter, Melissa prints dozens
of her photographs, stringing them up on the clothesline to hang dry for the community
to see, proudly displaying her life, her loves to the drab little darkroom. There are
moments with her friends, her seemingly endless vinyl collection, her dog. Tiny pieces
of Melissa’s life click into place, orchestrated by the magic of the darkroom enlarger
rumbling to life with each new film negative.
There is something here, Joy thinks, while her gaze flickers from one photo to
the next under the dark red glow of the lights. There is something here that the outside
world has lost. It is evident in the way Melissa captures each of her subjects, shadows
sometimes falling unapologetically across the frame. Open-mouth gaping smiles that
are innocently caught, frozen in time. A tangle of angles and compositions leaving Joy’s
eyes glued to the hanging fresh prints strewn across the darkroom to dry. When had Joy
seen art that was so perfectly imperfect? Blurry, and sometimes out of focus, and with
messy colors and lines bleeding their way across Melissa’s work, Joy felt herself come
alive in a way she hadn’t felt in a long, long time.
Most people nowadays have turned their backs on analogue life. Can you really
blame them? Lives have been commandeered by small little screens, supplying
everything at the tips of our fingers with calculated, retouched, perfect ease. Darkrooms
and film cameras, both things living in the past, have been abandoned in a dusty
forgotten heap right alongside fax machines and VHS tapes. And yet still, everyday Joy
opens the darkroom up at 8 o’clock, twisting the keys in the lock and shoving the metal
gate up to reveal the narrow door. On creaking old knees, she makes her way below,
comforted by the familiar burning in her nose and the old rusty pipes running across the
ceiling. She finds she is more excited these days, despite her aches and pains. Excited
to see what Melissa prints next. This, she thinks to herself, this is what art should be.
Selfish and unapologetic and uncensored for all the world to see.
Evelyn Freja is a writer and photographer based in New York. Her work has appeared in
NPR, The New York Times, National Geographic and more. When not photographing or
writing, Evelyn spends her days with her partner and their two cats.
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