Darkroom Alchemy: An Artist Talk with Allan Barnes

Join us for Darkroom Alchemy, an artist talk in conjunction with Allan Barnes’s solo show Meditations on Sunday, January 19th, 2025 from 2 PM to 3:30 PM.

Journey through Allan’s decades-long career exploring historic 19th century photography processes and image making. Also on display will be Allan’s mobile darkroom built into his 1985 Toyota Dolphin RV—stay after his talk for a private tour!

Allan Barnes is a San Jose-based photographer and teacher with a history in photojournalism. His work primarirly features wet collodion tintypes, which are created using an early 19th century technique of coating glass or aluminum plates with light-sensitive chemicals before placing the plate in a camera, exposing it to light, then dipping and rinsing the plate in chemical solutions. The resulting images are ethereal and otherworldly.

Allan Barnes, born in Detroit, Michigan, has almost four decades of experience in photography. As a former photojournalist, his work has appeared in publications such as The New York Times, Detroit Free Press, Spin, and Metropolis Magazine. After relocating to California in 2007, Allan shifted his focus to teaching and has been an instructor of digital photography at Ann Sobrato High School in Morgan Hill, California, since 2017. In addition to his high school classes, he offers workshops on historic photographic processes across California, including at his San Jose studio—where he specializes in portraiture using 19th-century cameras and techniques—at the Harvey Milk Photo Center in San Francisco, and the Los Angeles Center of Photography. Most recently, Allan has been exploring landscape photography using a mobile darkroom built into his 1985 Toyota Dolphin RV. His work has been exhibited at the Center for Photographic Art, the LightBox Photographic Gallery in Astoria, Oregon, and The Image Flow in the North Bay.

Host or Publisher Cura Contemporary Gallery