A Brief (and incomplete) History

The Media Workshop is currently assembling an archive of the organisation and our project work over the last 30 years. As part of this we are also linking together other information on the history of other related projects.

The Cambridge Darkroom was one of the many community based photography projects that started up in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s such as Open Eye, Art in Action, Cameraworks, Counter Image, Mount Pleasant Photography Workshop. There were a get deal of others that started up all across the UK in the same time period, most are no longer around or have changed their direction. Surprisingly there is very little information out there on what was such a large movement, a good example of this is Cameraworks who were one of the most influential.

The Cambridge Darkroom officially opened in 1984, although its origins were some six years earlier. It closed down - after several reincarnations - in 2004. The Cambridge Darkroom 1980-2004 - A Brief (and incomplete) History at http://www.weepingash.co.uk/new/cd document its beginnings and some of its history offering an excellent history of this project, but also looks at some of the broader issues.