Richard Nichol­son doc­u­ments the last pro­fes­sional dark­rooms in Lon­don. Darkrooms—like wood shops, machine shops, print shops, sci­en­tific lab­o­ra­to­ries, and paint­ing studios—are mag­i­cal places filled with the clut­ter and chaos left behind by creativity.

I enjoy look­ing at work spaces. Pic­tures of liv­ing spaces (par­tic­u­larly in archi­tec­tural mag­a­zines) usu­ally seem con­trived and unin­hab­ited. Work spaces are more hon­est. Ansel Adams wrote, “There are always two peo­ple in every pic­ture: the pho­tog­ra­pher and the viewer.” But in these pic­tures, there are three!