The Living Darkroom
What if a photograph could grow?
For centuries, we've thought of photography as an act of capture light freezing time, chemistry fixing memory. The Living Darkroom asks a different question entirely:
For centuries, we've thought of photography as an act of capture light freezing time, chemistry fixing memory. The Living Darkroom asks a different question entirely:
What if the image wasn't a result, but an organism?
This isn't photography as we know it. This is photography reimagined as fermentation, cultivation, symbiosis. Where light doesn't expose it nourishes. Where time doesn't stop it metabolizes. Where the darkroom itself becomes a living system, breathing alongside the images it births.
This isn't photography as we know it. This is photography reimagined as fermentation, cultivation, symbiosis. Where light doesn't expose it nourishes. Where time doesn't stop it metabolizes. Where the darkroom itself becomes a living system, breathing alongside the images it births.
“The Living Darkroom is more than an experiment: it is the point where my practice as a designer, photographer, and thinker converges with biology, alchemy, and time.”
The Project
The Living Darkroom is a biodesign investigation that replaces photographic emulsions with living cultures of kombucha (SCOBY—Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast). Over 10 to 20 days, colonies of acetic acid bacteria and yeasts generate a translucent membrane, what I call "the skin of time"—that becomes the photosensitive surface itself.
When exposed to controlled light and natural pigments, this living substrate produces images that are unique, mutable, breathing. Each piece is a visual ecosystem: it grows, oxidizes, evolves. It remembers.
The result isn't a traditional photograph. It's an organism documenting its own transformation.
The result isn't a traditional photograph. It's an organism documenting its own transformation.
Context: Against the Algorithm
We live in an age of algorithmic image generation, where millions of pictures are produced per second. Perfect. Instant. Soulless.
The Living Darkroom proposes a radical countermovement:
• Slowness as method
• Imperfection as language
• Collaboration with living organisms as creative ethics This work emerges from a lineage of thinkers who understood that life and time are inseparable: the living systems theory of Maturana and Varela, Lynn Margulis's symbiotic biology, the temporal philosophy of Bergson and Flusser. But it's also deeply personal, a resistance to the culture of extraction. A return to cultivation. A reminder that the most beautiful things take time, care, and patience. Photography here isn't capture. It's cultivation. Light isn't an agent of fixation. It's a nutrient. Time doesn't freeze. It breathes.
• Slowness as method
• Imperfection as language
• Collaboration with living organisms as creative ethics This work emerges from a lineage of thinkers who understood that life and time are inseparable: the living systems theory of Maturana and Varela, Lynn Margulis's symbiotic biology, the temporal philosophy of Bergson and Flusser. But it's also deeply personal, a resistance to the culture of extraction. A return to cultivation. A reminder that the most beautiful things take time, care, and patience. Photography here isn't capture. It's cultivation. Light isn't an agent of fixation. It's a nutrient. Time doesn't freeze. It breathes.
The Process: Symbiotic Revelation
Phase 1:
Growing the Canvas I begin with a simple tea—10g/L black tea, 70g/L organic sugar, pH balanced to 4.5-5. Into this medium, I introduce a mother SCOBY along with 10% starter liquid from a previous culture.
For 10-15 days at 25-30°C, something miraculous happens: the bacteria and yeasts enter into conversation. Komagataeibacter xylinus weaves a biofilm of bacterial cellulose, a three-dimensional matrix of nanofibrils, translucent and flexible. This membrane isn't paper. It's alive.
Phase 2:
Preparing the Substrate Once matured, I carefully remove this "skin," rinse it with diluted vinegar (2% acetic acid), and adhere it to Japanese washi paper, raw linen, or unbleached cotton.
The drying process is slow, controlled. I'm not rushing it. Rushing would break the spell. What emerges is a semi-organic material that responds to light stimuli and retains residual enzymatic activity. It's ready to remember.
Phase 3:
Exposure I place a digital negative (printed on acetate) onto the surface. Then comes the waiting. Exposure happens through indirect sunlight or warm-spectrum LEDs (3000-3500K) for anywhere from 8 to 48 hours. During this time, UV and visible radiation activate oxidative processes in the cellulose and in natural pigments I've incorporated—iron oxides, turmeric, charcoal, concentrated tea.
The polyphenols in the tea oxidize, creating tones ranging from ochre to blue-green. The negative's pattern transfers not as a chemical imprint, but as a metabolic trace.
Phase 4:
Continuous Transformation Here's where it gets philosophical: these pieces are never "fixed" in the traditional sense. I let them evolve. Oxidation continues. Ambient humidity alters textures. Gradual light exposure shifts colors. Each work becomes a living record of time's passage not frozen, but metabolized.
Growing the Canvas I begin with a simple tea—10g/L black tea, 70g/L organic sugar, pH balanced to 4.5-5. Into this medium, I introduce a mother SCOBY along with 10% starter liquid from a previous culture.
For 10-15 days at 25-30°C, something miraculous happens: the bacteria and yeasts enter into conversation. Komagataeibacter xylinus weaves a biofilm of bacterial cellulose, a three-dimensional matrix of nanofibrils, translucent and flexible. This membrane isn't paper. It's alive.
Phase 2:
Preparing the Substrate Once matured, I carefully remove this "skin," rinse it with diluted vinegar (2% acetic acid), and adhere it to Japanese washi paper, raw linen, or unbleached cotton.
The drying process is slow, controlled. I'm not rushing it. Rushing would break the spell. What emerges is a semi-organic material that responds to light stimuli and retains residual enzymatic activity. It's ready to remember.
Phase 3:
Exposure I place a digital negative (printed on acetate) onto the surface. Then comes the waiting. Exposure happens through indirect sunlight or warm-spectrum LEDs (3000-3500K) for anywhere from 8 to 48 hours. During this time, UV and visible radiation activate oxidative processes in the cellulose and in natural pigments I've incorporated—iron oxides, turmeric, charcoal, concentrated tea.
The polyphenols in the tea oxidize, creating tones ranging from ochre to blue-green. The negative's pattern transfers not as a chemical imprint, but as a metabolic trace.
Phase 4:
Continuous Transformation Here's where it gets philosophical: these pieces are never "fixed" in the traditional sense. I let them evolve. Oxidation continues. Ambient humidity alters textures. Gradual light exposure shifts colors. Each work becomes a living record of time's passage not frozen, but metabolized.
Materiality:
Between Biology and Poetry
The images that emerge have a quality I've never seen in traditional photography:
Organic translucency: Light passes through them, revealing microscopic structures that look like neural networks or mycelial webs.
Living texture: Under a microscope, you can see the bacterial cellulose fibers woven by tiny organisms, creating fractal patterns of breathtaking complexity.
Mutable chromatism: Colors shift based on temperature, humidity, and continued light exposure. They're alive.
Intentional fragility: These pieces are vulnerable, brittle, ephemeral. Their instability isn't a flaw. It's the point.
Each "living negative" contains the memory of its fermentation: the pH of the medium, the room's temperature, air currents, water quality. They're biosensorial archives of the moment of their creation.
Organic translucency: Light passes through them, revealing microscopic structures that look like neural networks or mycelial webs.
Living texture: Under a microscope, you can see the bacterial cellulose fibers woven by tiny organisms, creating fractal patterns of breathtaking complexity.
Mutable chromatism: Colors shift based on temperature, humidity, and continued light exposure. They're alive.
Intentional fragility: These pieces are vulnerable, brittle, ephemeral. Their instability isn't a flaw. It's the point.
Each "living negative" contains the memory of its fermentation: the pH of the medium, the room's temperature, air currents, water quality. They're biosensorial archives of the moment of their creation.
What We Discovered
Scientific Findings:
• The bacterial cellulose produced by SCOBY demonstrated superior absorption of water-soluble pigments compared to traditional paper
• Enzymatic oxidation of tea polyphenols generates stable tonalities 4-6 weeks post-exposure
• Temperature variations (±3°C) produce measurable chromatic changes in the visible spectrum
• The bacterial cellulose produced by SCOBY demonstrated superior absorption of water-soluble pigments compared to traditional paper
• Enzymatic oxidation of tea polyphenols generates stable tonalities 4-6 weeks post-exposure
• Temperature variations (±3°C) produce measurable chromatic changes in the visible spectrum
Why This Matters
The Living Darkroom sits at the intersection of contemporary bioart (Oron Catts, Eduardo Kac, Anicka Yi), but it proposes something unique: the fusion of biodesign, visual philosophy, and meditative practice.
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The project speaks to urgent conversations in art and design:
• Post-anthropocentric design: What does it mean to collaborate across species in creative processes?
• Expanded temporality: Can we recover slowness as a form of knowledge in a culture of instant gratification?
• Sustainable materiality: What happens when we use renewable organisms instead of synthetic chemicals?
• Aesthetics of impermanence: Can we find beauty in mutation rather than permanence?
In the context of generative AI and the overproduction of instant images, this investigation proposes an ethics of care: creating not as extraction, but as cultivation.
.
The project speaks to urgent conversations in art and design:
• Post-anthropocentric design: What does it mean to collaborate across species in creative processes?
• Expanded temporality: Can we recover slowness as a form of knowledge in a culture of instant gratification?
• Sustainable materiality: What happens when we use renewable organisms instead of synthetic chemicals?
• Aesthetics of impermanence: Can we find beauty in mutation rather than permanence?
In the context of generative AI and the overproduction of instant images, this investigation proposes an ethics of care: creating not as extraction, but as cultivation.
