Step into the darkroom with The Sustainable Darkroom and explore photography as a material, creative, and experimental art form. Presented as part of the Light and Magic: The Birth of Art Photography exhibition, this series of hands-on courses celebrates the craft of image-making through process-based practice and an arts-for-art’s-sake approach to photography. This is a chance to learn new skills and make personalised gifts.
Each course focuses on a different photographic process, from cyanotypes and botanical toning to natural chemistry chemigrams and phytograms. Working with low-toxicity and plant-based chemistries, you’ll learn how photographs are made, transformed, and experienced as physical objects.
These unique prints make beautiful, one-of-a-kind festive gifts. They can be kept as finished artworks or later digitised and transformed into Christmas cards, wrapping paper, mugs, T-shirts, and other personalised presents.
Inspired by the history of global pictorialism and alternative photographic practices, these courses invite you to experiment, play, and develop new skills in the darkroom during the most creative time of the year.
Explore the courses below to discover each process and book your place. These courses take place in the darkroom within the exhibition and include access to the show.
Courses will be led by Anna Lukala of Sustainable Darkroom.
Phytograms
10.15–12.15
Get a taster for low-toxicity photographic print making in this workshop! You will learn how to make phytograms on bromide papers. This is a cameraless photography process, that uses household chemistries.
Phytograms is a process of capturing the internal chemistry of plants on photographic film or paper. In this workshop, we will be working on bromide papers, recreating some of the colours and textures found on the bromide prints in the exhibition. You will learn how to transform leaves and petals into an auto-degrading chemistry that can activate the silver bromide paper, causing it to darken. This allows us to capture the delicate details of leaf veins and flower petals as the plants come into contact with the light sensitive emulsion, recording it as a permanent photographic image directly on the paper.
Natural Chemistry Chemigrams
13.00–15.00
Bridging the gap between painting and photography, this workshop introduces chemigrams, a cameraless photographic process using historic and expired papers that are similar to the ones that photographers in the exhibition were working with.
This workshop covers making home-made photographic developers using food waste collected from the Tate modern cafe, along with other local waste materials. Using these home-made chemistries, we will then consider the possibilities of the photographic surface and its materiality. Alongside our photographic developers, we will work with a variety of resists to produce a range of camera-less shapes, textures and images, on the surface of silver gelatine paper.
Cyanotypes and Botanical Toning
15.30–17.30
Join Sustainable Darkroom and immerse yourself in historic and low-toxic methods of pigment extraction and image making using iron based chemistries.
This workshop builds upon the traditional cyanotype, a historic iron based photographic process that uses sunlight to fix the low-toxicity chemistry to the paper, resulting in a vibrant Prussian blue and white print. We will make contact prints using pressed botanicals and collaged paper stencils and negatives. From this, you will learn the chemical relationships between iron chemistries and plant tannins, as we will then explore the possibilities of toning our blue prints using botanicals and food waste from the cafe at Tate modern to give us a range of colours.
Space inside the darkroom is limited and the table we will be working from is at a high level. Please contact us if you are a wheelchair user and would like to discuss adjustments that can be made.
Folding stools will be available.
All Tate Modern entrances are step-free. You can enter via the Turbine Hall and into the Natalie Bell Building on Holland Street, or into the Blavatnik Building on Sumner street. There are lifts to every floor of the Blavatnik and Natalie Bell buildings. Alternatively you can take the stairs.
- Fully accessible toilets are located on every floor on the concourses
- A quiet room is available to use in the Natalie Bell Building on Level 4
- Ear defenders can be borrowed from the Ticket desks
To help plan your visit to Tate Modern, have a look at our visual story. It includes photographs and information about what you can expect from a visit to the gallery.
For more information before your visit:
- Email hello@tate.org.uk
- Call +44 (0)20 7887 8888 (daily 10.00–17.00)
