Ari and I wandered around Bowden late this afternoon.
I’d gone there to check out Fontanelle, as I understood that there was a darkroom there and workshops on alternative technologies, processing and printing called The Analogue Lab. I was looking for a darkroom in Adelaide to develop my 8×10 black and white sheet film. I presumed that this photographic facility is run in association with the Fontanelle Gallery and Studio in Bowden. Everything was closed.
So Ari and I went walking around the streets. I took a few snaps. This picture of industrial forms (Conroys Smallgoods) was in Sixth Street, just down the road from Fontanelle before the Drayton Street corner. I used to work at Conroys when studying at Flinders University and the money I earned there enabled me to set myself up with different types of large format cameras.
Bowden was located close to the city, park lands and the train line and it is where I used to live and work in the 1980s. I had a photographic studio and darkroom in Gibson St near Seventh St, and I used to walk around the area and photograph it with medium and large format cameras. I also spent a lot of time walking in the western parklands with Fichte, my standard poodle.
Though I’d develop the film myself, I was never much good at printing (ie., producing a fine print), so I never exhibited the work about Bowden as a place. I just built up an archive of negatives in a filing cabinet. I’ve started to revisit and to digitalize.