Visual Arts

The Red Room Develops Community with an Open Dark Room

A dramatic photograph of three women in a dark setting, illuminated by deep red lighting, with the central figure holding a baton-like object.

Three photographers in Salt Lake City have opened The Red Room at Art Space Commons. From left, Jillian Meyer, Angelique Yvonne and Sarah Taylor. Image courtesy of The Red Room.

Looking to break down barriers of entry into the art world, specifically in the alternative processes of film photography, a trio of Salt Lake City photographers has turned their workspace at Art Space Commons into a community darkroom. With The Red Room, Jillian Meyer, Sarah Taylor and Angelique Yvonne have embraced a community-centric model, opening up a sometimes closed-off field by offering a space to create without economic or knowledge prerequisites. Building on what they’ve experienced amongst themselves, they aim to forge a community space for photographers to create together.

“All three of us are printing here, why not make it where more people can use it?” says Taylor, a Tennessee native who attended Watkins College of Art. “Because in reality, what we want is the community part of it.”

“We are obsessed with alternative processes and the community aspect and sharing art with people and doing it with people and inspiring each other,” says Meyer, a self-taught photographer from Michigan.

“The community [is] essential to being an artist. It helps you grow to be around people who are also creating. Not that you’re comparing yourself to their work, but talking about ideas, critiquing, being in the same room as other people is inspiring and it pushes the art and the community even further,” says Yvonne, a local who attended Utah Valley University School of the Arts.

The Red Room works off a punch-pass system, guests can either purchase a one-off session or a pass with six or 12, two-hour sessions. The first time someone uses the studio, the organizers offer a one-on-one demo, allowing for any skill level to walk in and develop their negatives into prints. The Red Room has a color processor, setting it apart from other darkrooms in the city, allowing participants the opportunity to develop in both color and black and white. The trio is also hosting donation-based workshops teaching different alternative processes to those quick enough to sign up, as the limited spots go quick.

A studio workspace equipped with photography and printing equipment, including enlargers, a backdrop setup with lighting, and workstations for creating and editing prints.

Interior view of The Red Room at Artspace Commons. Image courtesy of The Red Room.

This community darkroom mobilizes the idea that we can communally pass information around so that anyone can learn and forever have that knowledge to take it wherever they will. “We’re trying to cultivate creation,” Yvonne says. “For everyone. You don’t have to be a photographer. People are getting creative and you don’t have to be anything to do it. We’re creating a space where we’re teaching people how to make stuff on their own—that is really what this is about rather than us selling something,”

With the rise of AI and screens transforming the field for artists after Covid, spaces like The Red Room are bringing community back into art, returning to the tactile realm of developing from film, to paper, to wall. “Everybody got so insular in Covid, everyone is on screens and got this idea that we are all in it for our own selves. I think people forget how much better it feels to be a part of the community and to help people,” Taylor says. “Teaching people how to use the darkroom has been the most fulfilling feeling ever.”

A darkroom studio space with enlargers, storage shelves, and a sink area in the background, showcasing tools for analog photography and printmaking.

Interior view of The Red Room at Artspace Commons. Image courtesy of The Red Room.

“What brought [the three of] us together was the tactile access of film and printing in the space,” Yvonne says. “It makes you slow down and appreciate the process. Which is the whole point of film and the alternative process – the making rather than the result,” Taylor says. “You don’t know what you’re going to get in the end. You’re going to have dust on it, you’re going to have hair on it. You’re going to have a light leak. It’s going to be something that you didn’t picture beforehand, but it turns out all of those imperfections make it that much better.”

“Art is being consumed so quickly now,” Yvonne says. “A print that we made took us an hour and a half to get right, and it’s consumed in two seconds.”

In October, the space officially opened and in December, the three hosted a group show launching the space. Friends and new faces huddled together in the small space, intimate at the fore. Bringing focus back to the moment—the art—and presence among each other. They have already hosted a cyanotype workshop, teaching participants the process and having them walk away with personalized tote, shirt or print. In February, they are hosting a Valentine’s Day couples workshop for friends and lovers, with wine and chocolate and a color printing demonstration, eventually leaving the couple alone to print together. In March they hope to host a tin-type workshop, followed by a palladium making workshop and another cyanotype workshop. They will focus the space on donation based workshops and classes of the various alternative processes and dark room printing rather than gallery shows with the limitations of the small space.

“It’s getting people out of looking at work on their phones and looking at work out here,” Taylor said. “I am going to ride that high [from the opening in December] for months. That came from everyone getting a sense of community, seeing other people satisfied in person.”

The Red Room is part of a generational combat young millennials and GenZ creatives have to fight everyday, fighting for mental space against Big Internet, against screens, in order to get themselves in the public eye. It’s also part of a combat for physical space in a rapidly developing city. “Instead of having stupid luxury apartments going up all over, why don’t we have more spaces where we can build our own businesses, that will fuel the economy, that will help the entire community of Salt Lake by people having access,” Yvonne asks.

Meyer, Taylor and Yvonne have found a home in Art Space Commons, which cultivates cultural value by dedicating affordable space to artists. Spaces like The Red Room can begin to shift a cultural mentality, showing that the arts matter. That having dedicated artist spaces matters. And that the arts can build community.

“Salt Lake is small and tight-knit enough for a space like this to really make a difference,” Meyer says about their project. “For me, this space is for the people who are scared to get into something or haven’t had the experience to, the opportunity to, or didn’t have the support.”

“If people have a space to show something, the community is going to rally behind it,” Yvonne says. “Which we saw. We opened up this small space, and we saw the community rally behind us. It can only grow from there.”

Find more information about The Red Room and book a session at https://www.theredroomslc.com.

Categories: Visual Arts

1 reply »

  1. This makes me wish I was still using a film camera! (Well, romantically, anyway). I’ve always loved the smell of a darkroom. And the red light. And the absolute magic of seeing an image gradually appear on paper in the tray of developer. And the physical dodging and burning to improve an image.

    Darkrooms and print shops (because of other cherished old memories) are like HOME to me.

    I’m way too invested in digital to go back to film. But I will always love it.

    You are providing such a valuable resource. I wish the very best for your venture and will follow your updates.

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