ROBIN BELL

604 RPS JOURNAL December 2011/January 2012

BLACK AND WHITE WORLD

I n a garage somewhere in Fulham, masterprinter Robin Bell has weathered thedigital storm, and is now enjoying the

resurgence of his craft. “My work has beenmore appreciated in the past two years thanever before”, he says. “The people whocome to me are passionate about both pho-tography and printing. “I welcome hobbyists and professionals

equally. I don’t turn anyone away. Whenpeople see for the first time what a real printdoes for their work, the satisfaction in their

eyes is incredibly rewarding.” Bell first encountered photography in the

early 1970s, after training to be a chef at Eal-ing Technical College. The college also hap-pened to incorporate a photography school,and Bell found himself more inclined to so-cialise with the photography students thanwith his classmates. “Chefs weren’t the glamorous creatures

they are these days”, he says. “They allseemed rather stiff and military. Afterschool, I’d had enough of such a disciplined

approach to everything, so I gravitated to-wards the more freethinking and liberal pho-tography students. That was my first contactwith this world. “I quit chef school after a year, and went

travelling. Then, in 1969, I began to assistthe photographer Clay Perry, who was doingcolour supplement work at the time. I as-sisted him for free because he couldn’t af-ford to pay me but, being a privileged child,I was probably getting an allowance of about£5 a week from my dad.”

Despite its rumoured demise, chemical photography is here to stay. Robin Bell, one of the country’s leading printers, tells David Land why digital doesn’t mean the death of the darkroom

After a year with Perry, Bell assisted a seriesof photographers who all had darkrooms withintheir studios. Part of his work was to processthe films at the end of the day’s shooting. “I developed an interest in the darkroom”, he

says, “and withdrew from the front line, as Isee it. I wasn’t confident enough to be a pho-tographer. You have to be quite self-assuredto deal with teams of art directors, models andmake up artists, and in those days I didn’t feelI could cope with all that. The darkroom suitedmy temperament and personality.”Bell was soon appointed third printer at

John Freeman’s darkroom in NewmanStreet, along with Gerry Dickens and JohnStone. “They were two of the day’s fashion-able celebrity printers”, he says, “printing forfamous photographers, such as Clive Arrow-smith and Justin de Villeneuve. “They never taught me how to print, but I

was expected to keenly observe what wasgoing on around me, and that’s what I did. “Working alongside someone who’s always

churning out beautiful prints is the ideal wayto learn, because you get to know what’s pos-sible. You can’t necessarily do it yourself, butyou aim toward something higher. “If you don’t have a target that you know to

be a good product, it’s hard to know what towork toward, which is why people who workfor themselves struggle to discover the art ofgood printing. You don’t know what your lim-its are until you see the ultimate product.Working at John Freeman’s I got used to see-ing proper, rich, silver gelatine prints.” Bell also spent some time working for Joe

Andrews - 'Gypsy Joe' - of Joe's Basementfame. “I started his processing and printingfrom negative department”, he says. “Untilthen, he’d just been doing commercial work. “I also built up a client list. Simon Bottom-

ley, Clive Arrowsmith’s assistant, was myfirst breakthrough. He brought in his workto be printed, and showed the results toClive, who then started using me himself,and it snowballed from there. “I was helped by the fact that Gene Nocon,

who was the main printer at the time, wasslightly queering his own pitch by printingfor Prince Andrew. Photographers such asAlistair Morrison, Terence Donovan andTerry O’Neill couldn’t get their foot in thedoor, because his darkroom was surroundedby security guards from the palace.” Bell struck out on his own in September

1983, opening a darkroom on ChelseaWharf. “In the mid 1980s and early 1990s,you couldn’t help but make money fromphotography”, he says. “It was madness. Iused to employ about eight people. Now Iemploy a freelance processor, Kristof, whileJed looks after my many admin needs, in-cluding PR and so on.” Perhaps surprisingly for someone

renowned for his monochrome prints, whenBell takes his own photographs, he prefersto shoot in colour, citing William Egglestonand Ernst Haas as his biggest influences. “Most people are attracted to black and

white because it’s unusual”, he says. “Every-thing is in colour nowadays. The only timeyou see black and white is in photography. “I, on the other hand, work all day with

black and white, so I prefer shooting incolour. If I shot monochrome, I wouldn’t getround to printing my own work. There’snever enough time.” Although passionate about printing, Bell

was never drawn by the chemistry of theprocess. “I’m not one of those people whoreally understand what developer is made ofand why it works”, he says. “I still can’tquite grasp it. Dish processing one-off handprints is more of an organic process. You cansee it happening in front of your eyes, andyou can make corrections then and there.”Understanding paper, on the other hand, is

a fundamental part of Bell’s work. WhenMultigrade papers appeared in the early1980s, he treated them with suspicion. “Ithought it was cheating”, he says. “I have arather stubborn, old fashioned mentality. “It wasn’t actually a very good product when

it first came out, so I sat back and waited for itto improve. I had no need to go messingaround with Multigrade because I was sohappy with the products I was using. RecordRapid and Portriga were my favourites. “I think all printers threw up their arms in

despair when, due to EC toxicity regulations,cadmium was removed from Record Rapid.It was never the same again. “Cadmium makes a paper very adaptable.

You can lith print and tone it in gold and se-lenium, and all sorts. Fortunately, the Hun-garian paper Forte Polywarmtone came to usin our hour of need. It still had cadmium, themagic ingredient, and it was variable contrast. “The quality, though, was inconsistent,

which eventually brought about Forte’s de-mise. It was almost saved by a managementbuyout a few years ago, but they wanted print-ers to commit to buying a minimum amountof the product, so they knew they’d haveenough orders to start manufacturing again. “Like me, others wouldn’t commit because

of the paper’s lack of consistency, and thebuyout never happened. They should havehad enough faith that printers, liking theirproduct, would buy it if they manufacturedit, but they weren’t prepared to take the risk,so the company folded.” Bell has been hoarding papers as they be-

come discontinued, and his darkroom containssuch hidden gems as Record Rapid, Koda-graph Transtar and Bromofort. “People putthem on eBay sometimes”, he says. “I also oc-casionally get phone calls from people who’vebeen saving something they think I would like,and I then buy it at an inflated price. I haven’tyet reached the point of standing in the dark-room panicking that there’s no paper left.”Not that Bell gets much demand for exper-

imental papers anymore. “There isn’t themarket there used to be”, he says. “I supposepeople are getting enough variation out ofdigital. What they want from me is astraightforward beautiful black and white sil-ver gelatine print. That’s the granddaddy ofprinting. And if I do get the occasional re-quest for a lith print, there are still the papersand chemicals to do it.” Unlike Forte, fellow paper manufacturer Il-

ford was successfully bought out by its man-agement, and the brand is still going strongas part of photographic media company Har-man Technology. “Ilford fills all the gaps that appear in the

market”, says Bell. “It really tries to keepprinters happy. I have many conversationswith Steven Brierley, Director of Sales andMarketing at Harman Technology Ltd, aboutwhat we need. He tells me that digital’s effecton the silver gelatine market has plateaued andis now in fact diminishing, so silver gelatineis growing again. It’s very encouraging. “Digital has changed every photographer’s

life. When it first emerged, there was a hugeoverreaction to it. Even as recently as lastyear, I saw an article about the death of gela-tine printing, and the last working darkroomsin London. All I can say is that the rumoursof our death have been exaggerated! “Two years ago, I was dreading the future,

but now colleges are refurbishing darkrooms,and people are becoming interested in printingagain. I’m seeing renewed interest from peo-

RPS JOURNAL December 2011/January 2012 605

Left: Gered Mankowitz - Jimi Hendrix. The Ultimate Experience.Above: John Swannell - Jacques-Henri Lartigue,Photographer.

ROBIN BELL

606 RPS JOURNAL December 2011/January 2012

ple who have discovered the limitations ofdigital, or who don’t feel comfortable using itin a non-commercial situation. They tend torevert to film for personal work, because theyprefer the connection with it.“The only thing that worries me is who will

be brave enough to set up a darkroom whenoldies like me have gone. The great AdrianEnsor and Klaus Kalde make a living fromother avenues. I suppose in future, printerswill have to make a living from digital, andoffer silver as an extra.” Despite the proliferation of digital imagery,

Bell believes that film has the greaterlongevity. “When we hang our images onthe wall, we leave them vulnerable to lightand temperature”, he says. “Silver gelatineis subject to a great deal of bombardmentand pollution which it didn’t have to copewith 50 years ago, but I would still expectone of my prints to last longer than a digital

print in identical conditions. “As we send our prints out to the world, we

hope they’re going to last, and not getabused by people who don’t understandwhere and how they should be hung.” Although Bell doesn’t offer digital printing,

he is willing to print from intermediate 5x4negatives on FP4, converted from digital filesby Michael Dyer Associates. “There is a dropin quality when you print from intermediatenegatives”, says Bell, “but there’s not as muchof a difference as there used to be between anoriginal and a copy negative. There alwaysused to be a grey veil over everything. A neg-ative made from a digital file is a step up fromthat, but it’ll always be a few percentagepoints short of the real thing.”As digital has become the mainstay of com-

mercial image making, chemical photographyhas developed its own special significance. “The difference between now and the 1980s

RPS JOURNAL December 2011/January 2012 607

Robin Bell has been darkroom printingfor more than 30 years, and is widelyacknowledged as one of the world’s

master printers. Richard Dunkley’s film doc-uments Bell’s working methods and tech-niques, and interviews some of thephotographers, archivists and galleries whocontinue to use his services.Dunkley’s film is essentially one long inter-

view with Bell, who talks to the camera abouthis life and his work. He is followed into thedarkroom, around his studio and at his work-bench. He explains what he is doing and why- everything from the ‘hand ballet’ of dodging

and holding back under an enlarger, to loading10x8 cut film into carriers for processing, ton-ing and retouching his finished prints, rightthrough to drying and bagging them. Nothingis too mundane, but all is part of Bell’s workand he more than justifies the discussion.For the traditional darkroom worker,

there is some nostalgia, but also much to bereminded of here. For students going intothe darkroom for the first time, Bell hasplenty to teach. This explains the demandfor his work. The National Portrait Galleryused Bell to make prints from Ida Kar’s orig-inal negatives, and the curator notes that hewas the best of several printers the gallerytried out. Bell was able to get the most fromKar’s negatives in a sympathetic way. The photographer Amanda Searle says that

Bell’s prints have a life of their own. This sug-gests that Bell’s work is more than a ‘mix ofchemistry, craft and art’ - in Bell they arepitched perfectly. As he acknowledges, he hasa passion for his work and a fantastic job.This film is a celebration of Bell’s work, and

of the darkroom generally. Bell hopes that hewill leave a legacy to silver photography. Thefact that photographers such as RichardYoung, Ken Griffiths, Mike McGoran, AmandaSearle, Martin Colbeck and college students alluse his services suggests that he will.Dunckley’s film is entertaining and informa-

tive. It is well produced, and great value. Highlyrecommended. Michael Pritchard FRPS

Available through The Society’s online shop:www.rps.org/store at £19.50. Total runningtime, including extras, 70 mins.

Above: Ian Berry - Fulham Jubilee Celebrations -London.Above, right: Alistair Morrison - Daniel Day-LewisLeft: Warwick Sloss - Urban Fox No1.

THE SILVER FOOTPRINT. THE ART OF ROBIN BELL, MASTER PRINTER

is that every single job I get these days is nicequality work”, says Bell. “All the everydaycommercial stuff is done through digital, so Iam left with the people who are enthusiasticabout photography and don’t just see it aswork. Every job is an absolute delight.”Bell is philosophical about his continued

success. “I’ve always taken each day as itcomes”, he says. “I come in, do some print-ing, love it, and go home. I don’t think aboutthe effects of digital or double dip reces-sions. I just do what’s in front of me andenjoy my day enormously, because printingis - and always has been - my passion.”

David Land