Film photography as a creative practice has been an established discipline for nearly two centuries. The earliest permanent photograph was captured in the 1820s by Nicéphore Niépce, a French inventor who utilized a camera obscura combined with bitumen-coated pewter plates. However, this primitive exposure process required hours of direct sunlight, making it both prohibitively expensive and extremely time-consuming to yield a single, static image.
Recognising these limitations, William Henry Fox Talbot, an English inventor, developed a groundbreaking alternative process in 1839: the calotype. By producing the first true film negative, Talbot introduced the revolutionary ability to reproduce the same latent image multiple times.
While black-and-white print making dominated the photographic industry for decades, the desire for vibrant colour prints persisted among artists and commercial photographers alike:
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Monochrome Era: Early darkroom chemistry relied heavily on silver halide emulsion layers to capture light, shade, and contrast.
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The Colour Breakthrough: In 1935, Eastman Kodak introduced the legendary Kodachrome process, using complex, multi-layered chemical emulsions to record red, green, and blue light spectrums.
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Modern Renaissance: Kodachrome became the first commercially successful colour film stock, paving the way for the analogue darkroom techniques that continue to inspire fine-art photographers today.
The complete journey from initial conceptualisation to physical execution, turning a delicate film negative into a gallery-ready print, remains a meticulous, hand-crafted art form. In this week’s feature, Giacomo Mantovani, an award-winning filmmaker, photographer, and visual creator, takes us behind the scenes of his darkroom process to demonstrate how traditional chemical methods continue to thrive in modern contemporary art.
Mantovani's current collection, titled Peaceful Minds, comprises a series of rare, hand-crafted prints born from a desire to visually communicate an understanding of inner peace within an increasingly chaotic world.
At the start of every project, Mantovani begins not with a camera lens, but with a sketchbook. He creates raw, drawn artwork to translate core philosophical themes into visible compositions. Once the initial concept is realized on paper, he carefully selects the precise analogue medium, film stock, and chemical treatment best suited to convey his message.
Watch our full studio walkthrough and darkroom process video below:
What sets Giacomo Mantovani’s work apart from conventional analogue photography is his willingness to intervene during the chemical development phase. Rather than seeking pristine, flawless photographic reproductions, he purposefully manipulates each step in the darkroom to guarantee that every single physical print becomes an entirely unique artwork.
By deliberately introducing splatters of liquid developer across the silver gelatin paper, Mantovani injects raw visual noise, textured chaos, and deeper narrative context directly onto the photographic surface. The chemistry reacts unpredictably with the emulsion, creating blooms of contrast, chemical burns, and organic patterns that can never be precisely replicated.
The physical destruction and alteration of prints form a crucial pillar of Mantovani’s creative ethos. In an age of infinite digital replication, where thousands of identical JPEG files can be shared instantly, he restores scarcity and aura to physical printmaking.
To preserve the artistic integrity and exclusivity of the series, exactly 15 limited-edition prints exist for each image in the Peaceful Minds collection. Once these prints are created, manipulated, and catalogued, the original negatives are retired or altered.
By treating developer splatters, scratches, and chemical bleeds as deliberate artistic choices, the collection challenges traditional notions of commercial perfection. The physical scars on the paper mirror the psychological textures of navigating modern life.
Rather than treating the darkroom as a mechanical processing laboratory, Mantovani uses it as an active painting studio, where light, time, temperature, and raw liquid chemistry interact in real time.
Giacomo Mantovani’s work serves as a compelling reminder of why physical film photography retains such an enduring appeal in contemporary culture. The tangible connection between light-sensitive chemistry, physical paper, and artistic intuition produces a depth of emotion that digital sensors often struggle to capture.
By witnessing his process from the initial drawn sketch to the final, chemically distressed print, viewers gain a front-row seat to an artistic practice that honors traditional historical techniques while boldly pushing the boundaries of fine-art photography.
