Bushwick Community Darkroom Closed. Here’s What Happened.

Bushwick Community Darkroom closed permanently on June 30, 2026. There is no more Bushwick Community Darkroom, and there will not be another version of it.

That is still difficult to write.

I founded Bushwick Community Darkroom in 2011 in a closet-sized darkroom in the basement of my apartment. At the time, there were no other community darkrooms in Brooklyn. Over the next fifteen years, it grew into a full photo facility with black-and-white and color darkrooms, film processing, scanners, workshops, exhibitions, studio space, and a community of thousands of photographers.

It was the only thing of any real value I had ever created. It was also exhausting. By the time the darkroom closed, I was deeply burned out. I had spent years trying to keep an increasingly expensive operation alive through rent increases, debt, lawsuits, payroll, equipment repairs, and the basic cost of maintaining a public facility in New York City.

Where did the money go?

People have asked this question, and it is a fair one.

The difficult answer is that, for the most part, the money was never really there to begin with.

After I ended the volunteer program in 2020, I hired several former volunteers back at $20 an hour. Almost overnight, Bushwick Community Darkroom was spending roughly $2,500 every week on payroll. That is one place the money went.

Then I was sued for $100,000. I spent thousands of dollars on attorneys while negotiating the dispute. We eventually settled for $45,000, plus a scanner valued at approximately $5,000. During the period between leaving our former warehouse and opening on Himrod Street, I paid $2,500 per month toward that settlement, even while the darkroom itself was closed. That is another place the money went.

The rest went where money always goes: rent, insurance, utilities, chemistry, repairs, software, taxes, supplies, equipment, refunds, payroll and the endless emergencies involved in keeping a large shared photography facility running.

Bushwick Community Darkroom was never secretly sitting on a pile of money. It was an organization operating close to the edge, and often beyond it, because I continued believing that the next membership campaign, workshop season, fundraiser or partnership might finally make it sustainable. For a long time, I believed that trying harder was the same thing as solving the problem. It was not.

The final attempt to save the space

At the end of May, I believed Bushwick Community Darkroom would close around June 1.

Then Adam Ottke of NYC/LA Film Labs approached me, and I believed we were discussing a partnership that could keep the facility open. The proposed arrangement was that he would secure a new lease for the space and manage the film-processing side of the business. I would continue managing memberships, workshops and the community darkroom. Ceaseless Media would activate and operate the studio portion of the facility.

For a brief period, it appeared that the darkroom might survive in a new form. Classes resumed. Members returned. We began talking publicly about what might come next. But the partnership never became a completed agreement. Instead, Adam ultimately proposed purchasing all of Bushwick Community Darkroom’s equipment and other assets for payments of $500 per month for ten months. That would have meant transferring fifteen years of equipment, infrastructure and work for a total of $5,000. I declined.

Ceaseless Media continued attempting to secure the space, and for a moment it appeared that they might sign a new lease, with Bushwick Community Darkroom remaining as a subtenant.

That arrangement also collapsed.

By the end of June, there was no viable lease, no completed partnership and no path forward that did not require me to continue taking on enormous financial and personal risk. The darkroom closed on June 30.

Why not rebuild it somewhere else?

Because I am done.

That is not the same thing as saying the darkroom failed, or that it was not valuable. Bushwick Community Darkroom existed for fifteen years. Thousands of people learned to develop film, make prints, exhibit their photographs and participate in a creative community because it existed.

When I opened it, Brooklyn had no comparable community darkroom. Today, photographers have multiple darkrooms and film labs to choose from across Brooklyn and Queens. The landscape changed. In part, it changed because Bushwick Community Darkroom proved there was demand for these spaces.

I cannot keep sacrificing my health, finances and entire life to preserve the institution indefinitely. For years, the darkroom’s continued existence depended on me absorbing every crisis. I covered missing money. I worked without real boundaries. I took on debt. I postponed rest. I treated exhaustion as an operational strategy. Eventually, there was nothing left to absorb the next crisis.

Bushwick Community Darkroom is not moving. It is not rebranding. It is not being transferred to a new owner. The name is retired, and I will protect it from being used to imply that another business or organization is the continuation of what I built.

Everything is fine

That was the headline of the first email I sent after the closure. Obviously, everything was not fine. But everything is over.

There is a strange kind of relief in finally accepting that.

I loved Bushwick Community Darkroom. I am proud of what it became, of the people who passed through it, and of the fact that it existed at all. I am also allowed to survive it. There are still unresolved questions, including questions about the fundraiser organized in response to the closure. I will address those separately and clearly. This post is simply the record of what happened:

Bushwick Community Darkroom closed permanently on June 30, 2026. It mattered. It was real. And it is over.