Photos: Max Sprott, Tina Wessel, Nelle Renberg, Ben Chislett

The Black and White Darkrooms

At the heart of the Neue Schule für Fotografie are two fully equipped black and white darkrooms exclusively for students’ use. We believe analog photography teaches our students to be patient, accurate and exacting, skills fundamental to a career in any image-based field. 

Students are taught to develop analog black and white film in their first semester and can subsequently book and use any of the eight enlargers at any time of day or night, free of charge. The darkrooms are set up so students can produce anything from passport-sized pictures to wall-sized prints from 35mm, middle format, and large format film negatives.

The darkrooms are equipped with trays, tongs, thermometers, measuring beakers, paper safes, film containers, developing tanks and reels, clamps, PE-dryers, baryt presses, film-drying cabinets, with a large light-table and a guillotine paper cutter outside.

Alongside our darkrooms for students, in-house we have Ina Schröder who runs a professional black and white laboratory and Ulrich Hagel, our Technical Manager and Analog Colour Photography Teacher, who runs a professional colour laboratory that students can rent out for their colour projects.

Photos: Anton Gartung, Tobias Neumann, Brenda Alamilla, Benjamin Kummer, Pauline Ruther, Eunsun Cho, Fernanda Peruzzo

Pauline Ruther’s first black and white film and print:

The first time any student develops their first film and enlarges their first negative is special. Pauline was a natural.

Photos: Ben Chislett, Pauline Ruther

Pauline has come a long way since then. For her current work, please visit her website and follow her @melanchromie on instagram.

To have a look at our Gallery, click here.
To have a look at our Studio, click here.
To have a look at our IT Facilities, click here.

Tile Image: Ben Chislett