5280
(Denver’s Mile-High Magazine)
November, 2002
Denver Darkroom founder, guru, and pied piper, Standish Lawder, is familiar with the famous quote, “If you build it, they will come.” He has lived the experience. Only his version goes: If you build it, they will come with drywall and plumbing, electrical wiring, paint and the know-how to remodel a former retail space into a photographer’s dream studio, library, and darkroom. Oh, and “they” didn’t charge him a dime. In fact, they even asked influential friends for money. Influential friends such as Yoko Ono, who recently sent a check for $20,000 to help see the project through to completion.
But then again the Denver Darkroom isn’t just any project.
“I don’t get it – it has a life of its own,” says Lawder. “So many people have volunteered. Everybody’s participating in the building of it. Everybody feels a part of it. It’s community. That’s the best word for it.”
As for the $20,000 from Ono, Lawder keeps the cashed check laminated and with him, probably as a reminder that miracles really do happen.
“It was totally unanticipated. I didn’t request it,” says Lawder, admiring the plastic-coated check with the famous autograph. As it turns out, one of his students is the daughter of the famous art diva. When Denver resident Kyoko Cox was back in New York she mentioned the project to her mother, who thought it worthy of her financial support and wrote a check on the spot.
What began in 1996 as a basic photo class run out of Lawder’s rented studio/living space on Larimer and 26th streets has over the years attracted more than 3,000 photography enthusiasts from beginners to professionals. Students and teachers alike echo Lawder’s sentiment that the Darkroom is a community, even a family, and that’s what keeps them coming back.
“It’s really important, especially in creative endeavors, to be in a community that is active and supportive. It tends to be very much that way,” says Kathy Esher, director of the monitor program. Whatever level you’re at, you’re surrounded by people who are interested in what you’re doing. That helps to keep that spark going.”
In six short years, the Darkroom has outgrown its original space (think college bachelor pad with worn couches and chairs, stacks of stuff everywhere, people wandering in and out at all hours). Lawder says he hopes he’ll be able to transfer the quaintness and camaraderie to the new bui8lding, though he’s not too worried. “Will things change after the move? Yes,” he says. ”It will be systematized and organized so we won’t have so much,’Where the hell is that?’ We’ll have a real studio. We’ll have improved infrastructure and we’ll move this community into that new home. We can make it bigger now. Before we couldn’t share a good thing with as many people.”
The new Denver Darkroom studio opened for business in July. And everyone interviewed said they gladly gave up some of the “funk and informality” of the original space for a little less worry over which fuse just blew, whether the heater is working, and the dust – a real nightmare when trying to make clean prints.
All this is good news for photographers who have come to know that at any time you can pick up class through the Darkroom on travel photography or lighting and portraiture, pinhole or night shooting, color or archival processing from some of Denver’s most notable artists such as Grant. Leighton, Eric Paddock, Kit Hedman, or Mark Sink. And, of course, Standish Lawder still teaches several classes from the basics to shooting skiing, large format, and the abstract nude.
At 66 years old, Lawder easily matches the energy and enthusiasm of any student or instructor at the Darkroom; he can often be found working until dawn trying to find answers to photographic questions or fixing equipment around the studio. He is tall and lanky with pale blue eyes. When speaking he’ll often run a hand over his buzz cut white hair, and when he really gets going on a topic near and dear to his heart, he will punctuate sentences with a cluck of his tongue.
Lawder’s philosophy is simple: “You just encourage people. Give them the education to draw on. You say, ‘that’s good, now make it better.’” Instead of enforcing regular hours and telling struggling students to come back tomorrow, Lawder will stay with the student until he or she is satisfied, even if that means working into the wee hours of the morning.
At the start of any class there are students who don’t know which end of the camera is which to those with considerable experience. Yet by the end of class, everyone walks away with a greater understanding and with better photographs to show for it. Rich Clelland, director of finances, explains, “Stan’s got a vision on a couple of levels. One is just creating an environment where people can come and do this—it’s very relaxed, not very structured—but at the same time if you want to go further, even if it’s one step or a whole flight of steps, you can do that because you have the resources.
Resources such as the teachers and monitors who get as excited about a new photographer’s work as their own. Faculty and staff member Jim Hardt says, “Everyone wants to see your photos. There’s a real unselfishness. One of the first things I like to do when I get in is go back to the drying rack and see what others have done, see what creativity has come out of the school.”
The benefit of the free-flowing system Lawder has developed is that students and instructors alike learn from each other whether in class or working independently developing film and images in the community darkroom..A lot of students learn more from each other than from the instructors,” says Lawder.” If you’re dedicated you can acquire an education in six months just by listening and watching.”
Whether a photographer is into the technical side of the art or they simply want to shoot cool pictures, the Darkroom seems to speak to each person equally well. “It’s however you want to go,” say Hardt. “I had students in my first Foto 1 class and not one of them thought they failed. They all left saying, I made the pictures I used to take better. Some much better, some a little better.’
“I guess the most important thing is, we’re very thankful to Stan,” says Hardt. “Stan is a natural teacher, he really loves it.” And he should after more than 30 years of working with students at Yale, Harvard, and UC San Diego.
Lawder, who loves science, initially thought he’d be a doctor. He studied pre-med at Williams College in Williamstown, Mass., in the 50’s. But after three years of coursework in chemistry and two in biology, it was a required humanities class that forever changed his life. “I thought, Humanities? What should I take? Someone said to take the history of art because it was interesting and easy. When got into class, I had an epiphany. I realized those images of great art had such meaning and historical reference. It just stunned me,” he says. Lawder switched his major to art history but finished his pre-med coursework as well.
As senior year rolled around, Lawder says. “the med school applications just sat on my desk. I met some unhappy doctors and I started to wonder what kind of artist I was, and how good. I didn’t know. Eventually, Lawder chucked the med school applications and chose Yale where he earned a masters and Ph.D. in art history. His thesis on film as art was radically new for Yale, and it eventually landed him a faculty position in the school’s art department as well as a visiting professorship with Harvard.
“I wound up teaching modern 20th century art but really wanted to teach the history of film. Yale said OK. Within two years that class was bigger than art history 101,” he says. The class was his take on film history. It stressed experimental and silent film but not much on Hollywood. “I was very anti-Hollywood.” Yale was a terrific place for Lawder in that he could teach and make films. He was called Mr. Film on campus where he put together a film festival and seminars.
After 16 years at Yale, however, Lawder realized that he wasn’t going to et tenure as a film historian – it was too radical for the time. So, in 1975 when UCSD started an art department and invited him to head it, he jumped at the chance. When he finally retired in 1996 he decided to make his home in Denver. And since he just couldn’t shake the teaching bug, he opened his own studio to students; thus began the Denver Darkroom.
It’s not as big a leap as one might think – going from pre-med to photography. Both require a knowledge of science and chemicals and considerable left-brained thinking. Yet both have a highly creative element as well. Add in the fact that Lawder, as he puts it, grew up with photography the way a lot of guys grow up with cars, and it actually makes sense that he traded in the doctor’s life for film.
“My dad photographed and he shot 16mm movie film. That was very influential for me,” he explains. “But I learned photography from the Sears Roebuck Co. catalog. I’m an information junkie. I’d go through the bra and underwear ads and for a 9-year-old kid that’s pretty fun. Then I’d go through car parts – you could buy a motor block, crank shat, and transmission. I figured out very young how the internal combustion engine works by reading that catalog. Then I found photography.”
Lawder gave his parents a list of equipment from Sears that he wanted for his birthday – trays, chemicals, a safe light– and he took over a closet in the house for his darkroom. “I remember my first print. It was a photograph of Mom with our horse Little Man. It was very grainy, black-and-white, underexposed. But that’s where it started.”
Where Lawder really made his mark in the art world was with 16mm films, which he got into shooting while a graduate school at Yale. Today, several of his films are in the Museum of Modern Art’s permanent collection. Of these films, he ways, “I don’t script, write story boards, or conceive them full blown. I find a piece of film and wonder what direction it wants to go in.”
As is the case with the film Necrology (roll call of the dead). Shot in Grand Central Station, Lawder captured 12 minutes of anonymous commuters in their daily routines. Back at his studio, because he was too tired to rewind the film, he simply watched it backwards and the concept was born. The effect of the finished film eerily shows lines of people ascending and disappearing into a shadowy abyss. Lawder added a lengthy list of bogus credits to the end for a touch of rather morbid humor that leaves viewers to ponder their own fate. “Once I shot the escalator, I thought, what was interesting about it? What are we looking at? What the hell is going on? I’m interested in questions like that.”
But as much as he loves film, Lawder doesn’t ‘t teach it at the Denver Darkroom. He says it would be like teaching an introduction to surgery course—it’s just too complicated. “You can’t make films like Necrology anymore. It was a throw away idea. That film cost me $182 to make in 1969. You could do that then: roll film, check out an idea, and chase it,” he says. “Today the cost is prohibitive. It’s a dinosaur technology. The parade’s gone by.”
When asked why he doesn’t shoot in digital format, Lawder says slightly appalled, “You’re not making a film. You’re making a video. I like the projected image. I like the impact. You’re sitting in a dark room bonded by everybody’s attention to this glowing rectangle on the screen. There’s noting else to look at. You make a pact with it. You either sit it out or get up and leave. Video never interested me. It’s illuminated furniture. Most of my films could not have been made on video. Theoretically, maybe, yes. But they would not have evolved.”
Another favorite medium of Lawder’s is stereo, or 3-D, photography, which he does teach. “I spent 10 years and a fortune developing an experimental 16mm film. Then I discovered 3-D multiple slide programs,” he says. “For a fraction of the cost I can produce a projection presentation that is highly effective. I can still explore minds with it so I gave up on motion picture.” Now Lawder puts together entire shows of his 3-Dusing banks of projectors controlled by a computer. The result is a compelling, continually changing work of art that is interactive as viewers watch images float off the screen and surround and envelop then, drawing them into the piece, making them more than passive bystanders.
As for the Denver Darkroom’s future plans, look for classes in digital photography (even Lawder admits it’s here to stay) and destination shooting—four-day workshops that people can fly in to take—will be added to the extensive class schedule. They are also into process of establishing a foundation that will offer financial support to help people in deed so they can take classes in photography
But in a broader sense, Lawder is really the idea man. His staff will tell you he’s not very good at the business side of things—that’s what they’re there for. No, he simply wants to turn people on to the world of photography. He wants to expand minds, get students to look at something that is pretty good and wonder, how can I make it better? His own work is compelling and at times confrontational. Yet, as a teacher Lawder easily steps aside and allows his students to bloom, much in the way he has sent the Denver Darkroom off to grow and expand beyond even his wildest dreams.