In mid-2025, dib Bangkok Art Museum brought a set of original negatives to Bangkok Darkroom, a collection of black and white Bangkok street photography that needed to be cleaned and printed ahead of their museum-opening exhibition. What started as a short darkroom rental turned into a full restoration and printing project, and it's a good look at what black and white hand printing in Bangkok actually involves once pushed to a professional, exhibition-ready standard.
How the Project Came Together
dib Bangkok first got in touch about renting our darkroom for three days to print the negatives on their own. After a few conversations about the condition of the film and the scale of the work involved, the plan changed, and dib Bangkok asked Bangkok Darkroom to take on the full project instead, from cleaning the negatives, printing on fiber-based baryta paper, archival washing, and drying the fiber prints perfectly flat (which is a special technique of our darkroom)
Restoring the Negatives
The negatives were not in the best shape. There was definitely some not-so-careful handling involved throughout their lifetime, and combined with Thailand’s hot and humid climate, there was mold and a fair amount of dust on the film. This had to be dealt with before any printing could begin.
Our team worked directly with dib Bangkok's conservator through this stage, checking that every cleaning method used matched the standards their collection is held to. We settled on using 95% ethanol wiped with a lens cleaning cloth. The ethanol doesn’t react with the emulsion, evaporates quickly after application, while at the same time efficiently removing all dust particles and mold that are on the film surface.
Once the film was cleaned, we made several 5x7” test prints on fiber paper from each negative. This is a step that applies to almost any hand-printing project, whether it's a single roll of personal film or a full exhibition set. A test print shows how a negative wants to be exposed and where the contrast needs adjusting, well before it's worth committing to a full-size print.
Printing on 20x24” Fiber
Starting in October 2025, the project moved into full production: large 20 by 24 inch prints made on fiber-based paper. Fiber paper is the standard choice for exhibition and archival work because of its tonal depth and long-term stability, and it's the same paper used in Bangkok Darkroom's hand printing workshops.
dib Bangkok's curator, Khun Ariana, worked closely with the team throughout this stage, carefully reviewing each print and giving direction on tone and contrast until every image matched the vision she had in mind for the show. She does have a great eye for detail!
Fiber paper also comes with a quirk: when wet, the image looks noticeably lighter than it does once fully dry. This meant every test or adjustment would take AT LEAST ten minutes from exposure until it was ready for evaluation, when the next decision could be made.
Multiply that across dozens of dodging and burning steps for each negative, each needing its own tests, and you can see why this can take all day. Luckily, our team is very experienced, and we were able to pursue the correct adjustments and minimize the amount of tests required to the bare minimum. With that, we kept a steady pace of around two to three finished prints per day.
Judging from the above, one can quickly see the appeal of digital editing. However, the results are worth it. Because B&W prints on silver gelatin, when done properly, have that legendary tonality which digital prints cannot match. And this is precisely why dib Bangkok decided to go the traditional route by creating prints that are true to its medium.
Finishing the Prints
Every print went through a full archival fix & wash to clear out any residual latent silver halides and fixer. This step matters, especially for a museum. Otherwise, the paper will be yellow and brown, with the image fading within a decade. When properly washed, fiber prints have been known to last well over 100 years, and over 200 years in archival-quality storage (stable temperature, low humidity, and away from reactive pollutants).
After washing, the prints were mounted with acid-free gummed paper tape (water-activated, pH-neutral conservation tape) on glass plates to dry. When prints are wet, they swell in size. For a 20x24” image, the paper is larger by 1cm on all sides. The tape holds the print steady while it shrinks during drying. This even tension causes the baryta fibers to all line up, making the print completely flat once it is dry, with no curling or waviness at the edges.
This matters a lot, since dib Bangkok did not want to mount their prints on a matte board, instead choosing to use photo corners to hold the prints in place during framing.
The Result
By the end of the project, both dib Bangkok and Bangkok Darkroom were happy with how the prints turned out. A full set of large-format, properly processed prints, made from negatives that needed real care from the very first step, printed by hand using the same process taught in Bangkok Darkroom's own workshops.
If you're interested in learning black and white hand printing in Bangkok yourself, our workshop covers the same fundamentals described here: evaluating a negative, testing exposures, working with fiber-based paper, and understanding how to judge a print once it's dry rather than while it's still wet in the tray. Check our workshop schedule for upcoming sessions.
