“I was just somebody who really liked film,” Rosondunnii Marshall says.
That was three years ago. The Chicagoan still ‘really likes’ film, but now she’s got a brick-and-mortar community darkroom to share the medium with others.
Marshall is the founder and owner of The Darkroom Chicago where people can learn about 35mm film photography and development. It started at her dining room table, some friends, and some cameras—and has grown into an all-are-welcome, all-inclusive space for nerding out about film. Community darkrooms are public spaces to learn about and develop film photography. Together.
The full darkroom—replete with open lab hours, a light table, and a gallery—is inside the Tuley Cultural Center where camera clubs regularly met decades ago. Much of that equipment sat there until Marshall reclaimed it for her community.
“I think folks are yearning for connection, and I think folks are yearning for space,” Marshall says. “Sometimes art is very head down, to yourself, cold.”
On top of that, she noticed how few spaces there were for adults to socialize without heading to a bar.
“But [with] actual connection that’s facilitated,” she says, “we could build humanity.”
Rosondunnii Marshall, The Darkroom Chicago“I love the permanency of [film]. I love the fact that I have this here, and no matter what anyone says, I know that this existed, that this was real. That’s very powerful right now.”
That humanity is being developed across the Midwest.
Photo Opp sits in a 103-year-old synagogue in Appleton, Wisconsin. In it: a full community darkroom, a place to take photos, a gallery, and studio rentals. Programming in its film services lab started in 2023 and over 100 neighbors use the space each year, Photo Opp board member Char Brandis says.
“There’s been a pretty big resurgence in film photography and analog in general,” she says. “So much of the world around us is digital. We’re always in front of a screen and everything is so fast-paced and we’re all dealing with A.I. and all of that.”
Enter film. It makes you slow down. Be with the process. Stay present and intentional.
“If you can take a step back and understand those fundamentals, it’s going to make you a better photographer no matter what medium you’re choosing,” Brandis says.
Brandis says the “magic” and control artists have when self-developing “gives you this personal connection and intentionality behind your art.”
With photo stores closing, people who use film are finding it harder to develop their rolls locally—and with others. Processing film can be expensive, overwhelming, and siloed. Community darkrooms fight all that.
“Having a space to keep that art form alive gives people room to learn, to experiment, to fail, and connect with people,” Brandis says.
For Marshall, her community darkroom is a space for warmth, confidence, and savoring the now. Film requires your undivided attention, she says. You can’t have your cellphone on in the darkroom, or it’ll mess up the film. She calls the process “somatic and sensory.”
“And I love the vulnerability of that, and I think there’s an intimacy in that as well,” Marshall says. It has this power of storytelling and not just the actual outcome of it, but the process of it is just so humane. Film makes us all human.”