Kucha Chaudhary Market to Darkroom Studios: Delhi’s Thriving Film Photography Scene

It is the same at Kapil Inderjeet Vohra’s camera repair shop in Kucha Chaudhary. “I now receive at least one old film camera to repair every day. Earlier, the number was one camera per month,” says Vohra.

While the 36-frame limit makes the photographer carefully compose each shot, the anticipation of looking at the scans makes it exciting. Diptanshu Sinha, 25, got his hands on a Canon Prima belonging to his parents at five, which he still uses. “I started film photography when my grandfather gave me my first analogue SLR. I like it because of the control I get over my photographs,” says the software developer. Sinha, who has a darkroom at home, sources film rolls and gets them developed from individuals who re-spool films and have darkroom set-ups.

A contact sheet enables the artist to see all images at once and decide which ones to develop further (Photo Credit: Deepak Yatri)

For Vaishnavi Gupta, 22, a recent computer science graduate, it was a conscious choice to use an analog camera. “I wanted to buy a film camera as I was fascinated by the analog concept and the vintage look. I was very happy when my first roll came out nicely,” says Gupta, who purchased a pre-owned Olympus point-and-shoot from the Kucha Chaudhary camera market in 2020. “I love the noise in the film — it adds warmth and character. The emotion is hard to replicate on digital,” says Gupta, adding that the method captures lighting variation more naturally.

While the Kucha Chaudhary camera market was established in the ’70s, catering to the increased demand are also recent darkroom studios. One of these is the Maze Collective Studio, a community darkroom launched in 2019 at Chhatarpur to make analogue photography and alternative printing processes accessible. Co-founded by Ashish Sahoo and Zahra Yazdani, the studio conducts month-long art residencies and shorter workshops on processes invented in the 1800s, including Wet Plate Collodion, Gum Based Printing, Salt Based Printing and Albumen Printing.

“I have been into photography since childhood. The darkroom experience and seeing something appear out of nowhere on a blank paper is still magical for me,” says Sahoo, a self-taught photographer from Orissa. “It took me two-three years to learn all the processes. They were invented for European weathers and it was difficult to crack the chemical formula to make them suitable for Indian weathers,” says the graduate in art from Kala Bhavana, Santiniketan. Regarding the importance of returning to older techniques, he adds, “If you don’t know the darkroom, you cannot explore modern technology. It is important to know the history of photography to expand one’s practice.”

At the darkroom studio The Analogue Approach Project in Shahpur Jat, emphasis is on “exploring the culture of printmaking.” Initiated in 2020 by curator Rahaab Allana and creative collaborator Srinivas Kuruganti, the initiative conducts print-intensive workshops using the silver gelatin process. “The initiative aimed to get people back to the darkroom space. It was also a way for me to get back to the darkroom and teach,” says Kuruganti, a Delhi-based photographer. He specifically wanted to bring in people who did not have access to such a space. “The printmaking process is important because one learns a lot about shooting from printing and vice versa. It allows experimentation, play and agency over the medium,” says he. The workshops have welcomed professional photographers, filmmaking students, enthusiasts and even beginners.