A darkroom is a light-controlled room for developing and printing photographic film. Learn its history, chemistry, equipment, and how the analog revival is fueling new darkrooms in 2026.
In 2025, 312 new film development labs opened worldwide. That is roughly one new lab every 28 hours, somewhere on the planet. After two decades of closures that gutted the analog photography infrastructure and left photographers shipping rolls across state lines, the trend reversed. The labs are coming back, and they look different from what came before: community darkrooms, cooperative models, mobile processing vans, and full-service labs in cities that lost their last film processor years ago. The driving force is demographic. Gen Z photographers under 25 now represent 41% of new film photography customers. These are not people revisiting a childhood medium. They grew up digital and chose analog deliberately. And every one of those 312 new labs contains a darkroom.
A darkroom is a light-controlled room used for developing photographic film and making photographic prints. The room must be completely dark, sealed against all external light, because photographic paper and unexposed film are sensitive to light. The only illumination comes from safelights, which use filtered light at wavelengths that photographic paper does not respond to. In a black-and-white darkroom, the safelight is red or amber. Color darkrooms require different filters or complete darkness, depending on the paper type. Inside the darkroom, the photographer transforms latent images captured on film into visible, physical photographs through a sequence of chemical baths and controlled exposure to light.
This entry covers what a darkroom is, how it works, its history from the nineteenth century to the analog revival of the 2020s, and why it matters to photographers in 2026.
A darkroom serves two functions: developing film and making prints. These are sometimes done in the same room but more often in separate areas, since film development requires total darkness while printing can be done under safelight.
Film development begins in complete darkness. The photographer opens the film canister or 35mm cassette, loads the film onto a spiral reel, and places it in a light-tight developing tank. Once the tank is sealed, the room lights can be turned on. The film is then processed through a series of chemical baths. For black-and-white film, the sequence is developer (which converts the latent silver halide image into metallic silver), stop bath (which halts development), fixer (which dissolves the unexposed silver halide, making the image permanent), and wash (which removes residual chemicals). For color film, the process is more complex, using the C-41 process introduced by Kodak in the 1970s, which involves a color developer, bleach, fixer, and stabilizer.
Printing uses an enlarger, a device that projects light through the developed negative onto photographic paper. The photographer controls the exposure time, the aperture of the enlarger lens, and the degree of enlargement. After exposure, the paper goes through its own chemical sequence: developer, stop bath, fixer, and wash. The result is a silver gelatin print, in which the image is formed by metallic silver suspended in gelatin on paper. Read more about silver gelatin prints in our entry on silver gelatin printing.
The darkroom is not just a technical facility. It is a space where the photographer makes aesthetic decisions that cannot be made digitally. Dodging (holding back light from a specific area to lighten it) and burning (adding extra exposure to darken an area) are done by hand, with tools as simple as a piece of cardboard on a wire. The contrast of a print is controlled by the grade of paper used or by multigrade filters. The tone is affected by the choice of developer, the dilution, the temperature, and the agitation. Two photographers printing the same negative in different darkrooms will produce different prints. The darkroom is where the photographer's interpretation of the negative becomes physical.
The darkroom is as old as photography itself. When Louis Daguerre announced the daguerreotype process in 1839 and William Henry Fox Talbot announced the calotype process the same year, both required darkened rooms for sensitizing and processing their light-sensitive materials. Talbot called his camera images "photogenic drawings" and produced them by placing objects on sensitized paper and exposing it to sunlight. The processing was done by candlelight in a room with curtains drawn shut. The term "darkroom" was not yet in use, but the principle was established: photography requires a space where light can be controlled absolutely.
As photographic processes evolved through the nineteenth century, from wet plate collodion to gelatin silver, the darkroom became more standardized. Wet plate photographers carried portable darkrooms in horse-drawn wagons because the collodion process required the plate to be sensitized, exposed, and developed while still wet. These mobile darkrooms were tents or boxes lined with dark fabric, large enough for the photographer to insert their hands and work by the light of a candle or safelight.
The twentieth century darkroom was the backbone of professional photography. Every newspaper, every portrait studio, every commercial photography business had a darkroom. The equipment became standardized: the enlarger (Beseler, Omega, Durst), the developing tanks (Paterson, Jobo), the trays, the timers, the thermometers. Black-and-white darkrooms used red or amber safelights. Color darkrooms required either complete darkness or specialized sodium vapor safelights.
The darkroom also became a space of artistic exploration. Ansel Adams developed the Zone System, a method of controlling exposure and development to produce prints with a specific tonal range, in his darkroom in Yosemite. Adams's prints, made on silver gelatin paper from large-format negatives, are benchmarks of what the darkroom can produce. Read more about the Zone System in our entry on the Zone System. Man Ray experimented with photograms, placing objects directly on photographic paper and exposing it to light, bypassing the camera entirely. Jerry Uelsmann used multiple enlargers to combine different negatives into a single print, creating surreal composite images decades before Photoshop made digital compositing possible.
The darkroom nearly disappeared in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Digital photography replaced film in professional workflows with stunning speed. By 2006, most professional photographers had switched to digital. By 2010, darkrooms had been dismantled in newspaper offices, portrait studios, and art schools. Kodak filed for bankruptcy in 2012. The infrastructure that supported analog photography, the film manufacturers, the chemical suppliers, the darkroom equipment makers, the professional labs, collapsed. Photographers who wanted to keep working in the darkroom found it increasingly difficult to buy supplies. Many darkrooms were converted to storage rooms or digital editing suites.
The revival of film photography has been one of the most unexpected developments in the history of the medium. According to PetaPixel senior news editor Matt Growcoot, "interest in film since circa 2020 has more than tripled." The film photography market hit $613 million in 2026, with wholesale orders up 127% since 2020. Kodak quadrupled its film output by moving from a single shift to 24/7 operation at its Rochester plant and carried out a major renovation in 2024. Harman Technology, the company behind Ilford and Kentmere black-and-white films, spent millions on new machines at its plant near Manchester. Read more at Chemical and Engineering News.
The revival has driven a boom in darkroom construction. The 312 new film labs that opened in 2025 include community darkrooms that offer shared access to enlargers, developing tanks, and scanning equipment for a monthly membership fee. They function like co-working spaces for analog photographers. Co-op lab models pool resources among a group of photographers who share equipment, chemistry, and space. Mobile processing vans bring developing services directly to communities, events, and workshops. The Darkroom Chicago, set to launch in 2026 as the city's first Black-owned film lab, includes a Mobile Darkroom Initiative that will bring film processing, photography workshops, and community archiving to South and West Side neighborhoods. Read more at Pellica.
The revival faces challenges. The chemical supply chain is fragile. Only two companies currently make development chemicals at significant scale: Fujifilm in Belgium and Photo Systems in Dexter, Michigan. Silver, the core material of analog photography, cost $15.70 per ounce in 2015 and reached over $72.40 per ounce by 2025, driven not just by photography's revival but by its critical role in solar panels, electric vehicles, and medical manufacturing. As of 2026, only Kodak and Fujifilm are producing materials for silver halide prints. Read more at RedShark News.
Adams's darkroom work was as important to his photographs as his camera work. He developed the Zone System in the 1940s as a method of controlling the tonal range of a print from exposure to final output. His prints, made on silver gelatin paper from large-format negatives, are notable for their deep blacks, luminous highlights, and precisely controlled midtones. Adams's darkroom in Carmel, California, was equipped with multiple enlargers and a custom-built enlarging system for his large-format negatives. His book The Print (1983) remains a standard reference for darkroom technique.
Man Ray used the darkroom as a creative space, not just a processing facility. His photograms, which he called "rayographs," were made by placing objects directly on photographic paper and exposing it to light. No camera, no negative, no enlarger. The darkroom itself was the creative instrument. Works like Rayograph (1922) and Le Violon d'Ingres (1924) used darkroom techniques to create images that could not exist outside the darkroom. Read more about Man Ray's darkroom experiments in our entry on alternative processes.
Uelsmann used multiple enlargers in a single darkroom to combine different negatives into a single print. His composite images, like Untitled (1969), which shows a pair of hands emerging from a landscape, were made entirely in the darkroom, without digital manipulation. Uelsmann's technique required precise control of exposure, dodging, and burning across multiple enlarger stations, and his work demonstrated that the darkroom was capable of producing images as surreal and constructed as any digital composite.
While not individual artists, Ilford (now Harman Technology) has been the most important manufacturer of darkroom materials for over a century. Based in Mobberley, UK, Harman produces Ilford and Kentmere black-and-white films, darkroom papers, and photo chemicals. The company's recent videos, shared in 2026, show how film is made today, from the lab to the production line. Managing director Greg Summers noted that "users have limited choice and manufacturers are battling old machinery and processes, and replacement parts that just don't exist anymore." Read more at PetaPixel.
The darkroom is the workspace for film photography and the production of silver gelatin prints. It connects to the Zone System, Ansel Adams's method of controlling tonal range. It relates to alternative processes, which use darkroom techniques with historical or non-standard materials. It is the physical counterpart to digital photography, which replaced the darkroom with software. For broader context, read our post on photography as fine art, or explore our entry on exposure.
Working darkrooms are increasingly accessible. Community darkrooms have opened in cities across the world, offering membership-based access to enlargers, developing tanks, and scanning equipment. The Darkroom Chicago, launching in 2026, will be the first Black-owned film lab in Chicago, with a Mobile Darkroom Initiative bringing processing to neighborhoods that lack access. Many art schools and community colleges still maintain darkrooms that are open to non-students through continuing education programs.
If you want to experience the darkroom, start with a community darkroom or a workshop at a local camera shop. Processing your first roll of film and making your first print is a physical experience that digital photography cannot replicate: the smell of the chemicals, the red glow of the safelight, the moment when the image appears on the paper in the developer tray. For more, read our entries on film photography and the Zone System, or explore our post on photography as fine art.
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