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The Disappearance of Darkness
Photography at the End of the Analog Era
Robert Burley
ISBN 9781616890957
Publication date 10/24/2012
10.6 x 8.5 inches (26.9 x 21.6 cm), Hardcover
160 pages, 65 color illustrations
Rights: World;
(201.0)
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$50.00
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Over the past decade, photographer Robert Burley has traveled the world documenting the abandonment and destruction of film-based photography, namely, the factories where film was produced and the labs that developed it. Burley's atmospheric large-format photographs transport viewers to rarely seen sites where the alchemy of the photographic process was practiced over the last century, from the Polaroid plant in Waltham, Massachusetts to the Kodak-Pathé plant in Chalon-sur-Saône, France, the birthplace in 1827 of photography itself. As both fine art and documentary,
The Disappearance of Darkness is an elegiac reflection on the resilience of traditional art forms in the digital era and a vital commemoration of a century-old industry that seems to have disappeared overnight.
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Editorial Reviews
CNN:
"A longtime architectural photographer, Burley's images of abandoned film manufacturing plants serve as a record of a defining moment in the history of photography."
The Economist:
"Full of poignant insights, both visual and literary, into a bygone technological era."
Wired:
"Burley has traveled the globe over a period of six years and photographed Ilford in London, AGFA-Gavaert in Belgium, Polaroid in the Netherlands and even Dwaynes Photo in Kansas, which became known as the last lab to develop Kodachrome. The resulting project, Disappearance of Darkness, is a bittersweet visual eulogy to film, shot on the medium whose demise it documents."
CNN:
"A longtime architectural photographer, Burley's images of abandoned film manufacturing plants serve as a record of a defining moment in the history of photography."
Popular Photography :
"Robert Burley is an architectural photographer who has turned his lens in an interesting direction chronicling the buildings where the film supplies he relied on were once crafted. In a new book called Disappearance of Darkness: Photography at the End of the Analog Era, Burley has pulled together some incredible shots of what was once a thriving industry, now sadly in decline."
New York Times Lens Blog:
"Ask me about film, and my head gets light and my heart races. Had it not been for all those bulk-loaded rolls of Tri-X I tore through in the 1970s, I would have few memories of what had been the landscape of my youth. Those same emotions - of joy, confusion, excitement and, yes, loss - are vividly evoked by Robert Burleys book The Disappearance of Darkness: Photography at the End of the Analog Era. In it, he chronicles the breakneck speed at which film and the huge factories where it was produced have almost vanished. He has pulled back the curtains and taken the viewer into places where film, paper and chemicals were cloaked in darkness - both literal and legal. Using a 4-by-5 film camera whose technology itself harkens to the 19th century, he has produced a meditative and loving look at an industry that has imploded like the dozens of factories that have vanished into rubble and empty lots."
The Guardian :
"It is already a kind of elegy."
The Midwest Book Review:
"A powerful photography title packed with strong evidence of the entire tradition process, high recommended for any photography or arts collection."
Prefix Photo:
"Despite his obvious love for film, Burley deftly avoids nostalgia, presenting instead a penetrating collection of images that probe the wider effects of photography on our society. One wonders whether the digital age will ever inspire such a tribute."
The Literate Lens:
"In The Disappearance of Darkness: Photography at the End of the Analog Era, Robert Burley delivers a thoughtful visual essay about the end of the industrial film era."
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