Dear Alec

The pandemic had brought my photography to a halt. I no longer had access to the community darkroom where I used to print, and without having the means to fully realize a photograph my motivation just waned. But then a year into it, your YouTube channel arrived.

Photobooks as physical objects suddenly captivated me. Seeing classic photobooks along with odd titles and formats I’d never considered before opened up a world of possibility. I needed to make my own book dummy - but how? Pasting photos into a store-bought notebook? Nah. The search for a suitable format led to my foray into book binding, and that become kind of an obsession in itself.

After a few notebooks it was finally time to work on a photobook. I settled on a simple theme for this first book. But I needed a way to print the photographs. No, digital prints would not do. After all I’d spent the last few years printing regularly in the darkroom, and could not possibly accept any less.

A week of manic searching on Craigslist led me up to Novato, where someone was selling his father’s old darkroom equipment. My wife was out of town for the weekend, so I rushed up and brought back an entire carload of dusty old stuff. A few days later, I had a fully functioning darkroom in our one-bedroom one-bathroom apartment. You just couldn’t shower.

Finally everything was in place to be able to bring this first photobook to life. Here are some photos of the finished product.