Over the years I must have spent thousands of hours silently brushing on the liquid coatings, preparing each sheet in anticipation of reaching the perfect print.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I'm pretty selective. I generally edit the contact sheets and then do work prints. Because I have my own lab and printers, I can afford the luxury of going through the contact sheets for black-and-white, making up work prints, seeing them big, and honing them down.
I was a very, very careful printer when I used 8-by-10 film. I probably spent more time on printing than anything else. The more the prints were appreciated, the more time I spent on them.
I am probably exaggerating a little, but I owe my equilibrium to ink and paper.
I'm a very careful, slow writer, and I think a lot of that comes from the care required to be a hand-printer, where if something isn't spaced out enough, you take little slivers of brass or copper and put them between each letter.
I love dishes and house things so I kind of lost it a little bit on the house ware. One-thousand thread-count sheets, that's what I indulged in.
For me the printing process is part of the magic of photography. It's that magic that can be exciting, disappointing, rewarding and frustrating all in the same few moments in the darkroom.
Ever since I was a girl, I have written about one to five pages every day - on napkins, on scrap paper, in notebooks and tablets, on the walls in my room as a teenager, and in orange paint on the cheap white plastic blinds in my room.
Even after I got my divorce, the ink wasn't even dry on the paper, and I said, 'Ooh, the next time I become a wife, I got this thing down pat!' I always believed that there was someone built for me.
I'm the sort of person who doesn't write in ink. I only write in pencil, so it can be rubbed out.
I act as a sponge. I soak it up and squeeze it out in ink every two weeks.