At least, as far as photo galleries are concerned nowadays.   Check out this link to a "Currently Hanging" post over at SLOG.  It’s of a rather nice black and white photographic print now hanging at the McLeod Residence gallery in Seattle.   Here’s the caption:

Walter Grio’s Waiting (2008), framed digital print on Kodak quality paper, 16 by 20 inches

…on Kodak quality paper.   They’re talking about inkjet printer paper there.  The same stuff I run through my Epson R1800 when I want to make a nice print for somebody.  They don’t have to be silver prints anymore to be gallery quality.   That’s how far the technology has come.

My dream of home ownership had always included space for a full function darkroom.  I’d have needed space for both a "dry" and "wet" side, the dry side having enough space for a nice Beseler enlarger setup and the wet side would have had to have had space enough for a darkroom sink I could put 16 x 20 paper processing trays in plus the washing equipment.  I figured it would have to be the size of a small bedroom.  When I bought my little Baltimore rowhouse half its basement was already finished as a knotty pine den with a bar and I fretted about whether or not I wanted to demolish that and put the darkroom in it’s place.  Thing was, I also wanted space to put in an art room, plus an office/computer room space. 

Well…the front bedroom became my office and the basement den became the art room and as it turns out, all I need for a darkroom is just the little bathroom in the back of the basement which I can make light proof enough to use for loading my film tanks.  I develop my film at the bar and when the negatives are dry I run them through my Nikon film scanner and into Bagheera, the art room G5 Mac and I don’t need a paper darkroom anymore which is great.  I can’t make 16 x 20 prints here at Casa del Garrett, but the Epson will handle paper up to 13 inches wide and at some point, when I can find it in the budget, I intend to replace it with something like the Epson 3800 that actually will do 16 inch wide paper.

And then I can make gallery quality prints right here at home, and I don’t need that big darkroom anymore.   And I don’t have to mix up gallons and gallons of chemicals and then clean it all up after I’m done and waste one sheet of paper after another to pinpoint exactly the right mix of paper contrast, exposure and development.  Not only is the digital darkroom cleaner, it is more, far, far more, productive.  I get it right once on the computer, either in Aperture or Photoshop, and it’s right every time I send it to the printer.  And I’m here to tell you that touching out dust specks is a heck of a lot easier in Photoshop then with a brush and dye on one print after another.  Oh…and dodging and burning?  I do it once in the computer and get the identical results for every print I make from then on.

I still like working with black and white photographic film, and color slide film and I’ll probably never stop taking my film cameras with me places I go.  But I am so glad I don’t have to deal with having a paper darkroom anymore.