Although I’ve always enjoyed taking pictures I was never obsessively into photography in the pre-digital days. Still though I can’t help but romanticise the darkroom days a little bit, despite having developed film myself just once and even then only at college. There’s something magic about what happens in those spaces that I’d love to have really experienced properly.

So I can’t help but find this project by Richard Nicholson really beautiful and sad.

He writes: “Summer 2006. Durst announces that it will no longer manufacture photographic enlargers. Sales have plummeted from a peak of 107,000 units in 1979 to just a few hundred units in recent years…

“1979 was the year my father constructed a darkroom and introduced me to photography. I was immediately entranced by the printing process, and I cherished the long hours spent in this dark, silent, private space. Ever since the darkroom has been integral to my work as a photographer. But for how much longer?”