In an age dominated by over-exposure, Lucia Rollow’s long-running Bushwick Community Darkroom outfit has always had a modest goal: building a fellowship of local artists who bring their best work to life in the dark.
Last month, before fully opening her darkroom’s doors again, Rollow hosted an open house to get the word out about her new center of operations on Himrod Street, giving her budding group of paying darkroom members, as well as some new neighbors, the chance to display their photos on her darkroom’s gallery walls.
I caught up with Rollow outside, where she stole a quiet moment from the buzz inside. As she finished her cigarette, we talked about the nearly fourteen-year journey to open this latest iteration of her darkroom idea in Bushwick.
“I went to the School of Visual Arts and graduated in photography in 2009,” she tells me, “and you can use their darkroom for one or two years after that. So, in 2011 I found myself without a darkroom for the first time in, I don’t know, ten years.”
She shifts her weight back and forth to mimic lugging her film equipment to the city to work in darkrooms that she couldn’t afford, in buildings where she’d have to pass through a sea of “14-year-olds slam dancing on the first floor.”
Rollow takes a puff of her cigarette and breathes out. “I ran a Kickstarter, and I built it myself in a storage unit in the basement of my loft building.” She started calling it the “Bushwick Community Darkroom” in 2011.
As the name might suggest, she didn’t want to keep her darkroom private. “I missed the interaction you get in communal darkrooms—where you don’t have to talk to people but you’re still surrounded by the energy of others. As an introvert, I wanted a space like that, where you can work and connect when you feel like it.”
Her journey hasn’t been without setbacks. As she was putting her latest location together, Rollow had found herself entangled in a $10,000 lawsuit in 2020 against a contractor hired for renovations. “None of the issues I’ve had with the current space actually had anything to do with the space or its management,” she told me over text later in the week, “I just hired a con artist so no I’m taking her to court.”
On top of that, she also had to pay out $50,000 in 2022 to settle a lawsuit from Caleb Savage, who used to volunteer for one of the original locations of the Bushwick Community Darkroom, before he hired a lawyer and accused her of running a “for-profit photography center” that “never paid him anything for the vast majority of his work.” Five grand of the deal included a Noritsu scanner that Rollow had owned.
The scanner can now be found in the rival darkroom that Savage has since started on the Bed-Stuy border called Exposure Therapy, though he tells me that the scanner is currently in storage awaiting repairs. Rollow declined to comment about that case.
When a passerby asks us if the space is open yet, Rollow replies excitedly “I’m really anxious about actually admitting it, but yes, I guess we’re open!”
“We used to be in a crumbling warehouse on Troutman and Evergreen. So to have heat, A/C, a roof that isn’t collapsing, and an ADA [accessible] bathroom—it’s transformative,” she says, stressing the last of these.
Public hours to use the darkroom began this month; non-members can develop, scan, and print film on Wednesdays from 6-9 pm, and on Saturdays from 2-6 p.m., with rentals for the darkroom priced at $35 per hour.
You can also buy memberships to use her darkroom, which Rollow sells at rates that start at $20 a month and which lets you rent out the darkroom for a discounted fee of $28 an hour. For $350 a month, you can have unlimited access to her darkroom, which she keeps open to members 24-hours -a-day.
Rollow sees this latest and more permanent-looking version of her darkroom as more than just a workspace.
“I just want people to feel comfortable and autonomous in the space,” she tells me. “And I want them to want to come back—for a photo walk, a class, or another event.” In addition to rentals, she ran a free “Fall Photo Walk” last week, and sells classes with names like “Intro to Camera” and “Black & White Film Development” for $195 a pop.
“There’s basically three archetypes, right?” Rollow says when she tries to describe what type of person is attracted to photography. “There’s the old white man, there’s the young white man, and then there’s everyone else.”
She says she’s focused on making this a space for everyone else. “If you are a white man that wants a photography space that you can hang out at, and feel comfortable in, you have at least five options in the city,” she says, “and if you’re not a white man, you don’t really have that many options for places.”
Even though she’s battled, sometimes legally, against proverbial young white men, Rollow has kept her own vision for Bushwick Community Darkroom intact. For her, the struggles have only reinforced the need to create a space where everyone—especially those often sidelined in creative industries—can find a sense of belonging.
Find the newest location of the Bushwick Community Darkroom at 334 Himrod Street.
All photos taken by Cait Flynn for Bushwick Daily.
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