By Gabriela Capestany
Winter 2018 Kaplan Award Winner
In the back of the drawer there’s a pile of wrapped saltine crackers.
“There were three packs of saltines all equally laid out when I first opened this drawer” says Julian O’Leary, one of the teaching assistants for the University of Washington College of Built Environments darkroom. “I’m pretty sure John left them there. Whenever I bring soup down here to eat, I put another package of my saltine crackers in the drawer as a kind of offering for him.”
Deep in the basement of Gould Hall you can find this darkroom. For years it was run by John Stamets, a photographer of local Seattle fame whose work also appeared in newspapers such as the LA times and The New York Times. From the mid-eighties until his unexpected death in 2014, he taught architectural photography to UW students through the use of black and white analog film photography.
The darkroom is a time capsule that documents Seattle’s several phases from the mid-eighties onward. “When I first came down here there were boxes all over the place, every room and hallway was lined with them,” Julian says, adding, “John collected everything. We went through and sorted out the stuff that was broken or needed repair and put the rest into boxes. I feel like I am constantly finding new stuff. It’s like John is just around the corner and I keep chasing him, hoping to catch him but I never will.”
I combed through filing cabinet boxes deeper than my arm’s reach full of past student projects meticulously organized by year and sorted into manila envelopes. Inside are stacks of photo paper, much like the kind hung up today on clothespins drying in the photo lab. Not much has changed in how the class is run, black and white film still being the only available medium due to its simplicity and ability to teach students about the basics of film. But the content holds a trove of documentation from Seattle’s grunge days, through its growing years and finally to the tech era, where the city’s growing pains are starting to show.
Flipping through the pages of photo paper they show their age through the slightly yellowed edges and subjects within the frame. Baggy 90s tracksuits and bulky, outdated cars line the sidewalk streets in front of a Seattle skyline purely in its adolescence. This hidden room houses what may be one of the most expansive collections of Seattle’s architectural history, all captured and immortalized on film even throughout an era where many made the transition to digital.
In another room are more filing cabinets yet, fuller than the ones before. Except here you won’t find any photographs, these are all boxes sealed shut with a paper warning taped over the top: “DO NOT OPEN, UNEXPOSED FILM.” This is just a fraction of artifacts John left behind after he died of a heart attack in 2014. While the collection of vintage cameras lining his office are impressive and his famous negatives of the 1987 Husky Stadium demolition are rare and sought after, his undeveloped film that was left behind is almost supernatural in nature. With a hundred or so rolls, many of which are 4×5 film and therefore very difficult to develop, the lab attendants would have to spend many hours developing John’s film and ensuring they don’t accidentally expose his negatives. However, they plan on starting to develop within the coming months.
The subjects in these several dozen rolls is unknown. John was known for photographing buildings, several large prints of which are hung around the darkroom (exposed on paper by John himself). In 1987 he published a book called Portrait of a Market profiling Pike Place Market through street photography. John used a special camera called a Brooks-Veriwide, an ultra-wide medium format camera which created panoramic photo negatives. John captured the movement of tourists and buyers as they navigated the various stands, laying out twists, turns, and corners in one cohesive, wide shot. Even though the book is more than 30 years old, if you go down to the market and ask vendors (young and old) they will say they know of John and his famous book.
In his final years John started photographing roller derby and fell in love with the sport. He became involved with Rat City Roller Derby, photographing “bouts” of derby games in the Seattle area. His pictures capture almost a dance between the skaters, fleeting moments as they push each other by. Compared to his life’s work in capturing buildings, this subject matter was in stark contrast to stable, immovable skyscrapers.
But perhaps motion is what John was always seeking. Many of his later architectural photographs captured buildings and skyscrapers under construction, a constant change in a city consistently growing. This motion can also be found in the darkroom where every quarter a new group of students flow in to learn about analog film photography and exit back into the world, cameras poised and ready to continue capturing the changing world around them.
One would think that with such incredible digital technology around today that the art of film photography would be on the decline, but this is exactly the opposite of what the Gould darkroom is experiencing. Down in that basement film is having its renaissance at UW. Only two quarters ago the class was capped at 15 students with only a few left on the waiting list. Now, during the winter quarter of 2018, the class is at its largest yet: 25 students and a waiting list of 35.
Julian along with two other teaching assistants, Jordan Weigmann and Becky Reinhold, run the darkroom as a team switching off shifts to keep it open as many evenings as possible. In addition to those enrolled in the class, any UW student who knows how to use the darkroom can pay a $25 fee per quarter for unlimited access. Both those in the class and approved darkroom users have their Polaroid portraits taped up on the wall: 35 and growing still.
The florescent lights shine bright, KEXP plays softly in the background, and dozens of negatives flap gently as they dry on the clotheslines. The mood is always creative and the attitudes positive. “He’s here,” says Becky. “I know he’s here. It’s weird but I feel John’s presence in this room.”