The Handmade Darkroom:
Te Whanganui-a-Tara Sustainable Photography Collective
The Handmade Darkroom: Te Whanganui-a-Tara Sustainable Photography Collective was co-founded by Samson Dell and Belinda Whitta in 2023, when the collective was publicly launched after many months of dreaming! They have since created and facilitated many workshops that engage both practiced photographers and the general public. The Handmade Darkroom is a community-centric vessel for artists and photographers that practice analogue photography with a sustainable methodology.
Amongst other independent workshops, The Handmade Darkroom has hosted a series of four workshops for the Women in Photography NZ + AU exhibition at Twentysix Gallery titled Sussurations, a cyanotype demonstration for Newtown Fest 2023, and Te Papa’s After Dark in March 2024, and an analogue film festival titled seeing through a murky gaze as part of Love Rimurimu’s Seaweed Festival in March of 2025.
Between 2023 and 2025, The Handmade Darkroom have regularly collaborated with Women in Photography NZ + AU to facilitate monthly meet-ups for their local photographic community. These meet-ups have formed a rich sense of community and the perfect environment for collaboration. In August of 2024 we self-published the community-collaborative photobook titled whispering bird song. In November of 2025 we hosted an event called Potluck Slideshow, which invited submissions of 35mm film photographs responding to the theme moments of wonder. We exhibited these photographs in a slideshow format, with prizes donated from local businesses.
For a period of two years, the collective facilitated a Patreon account, bringing monthly content to their supporters in return for financial support that enables the sustainability of the collective, the facilitators time and capacity to create new and meaningful content each month. Although our Patreon has now closed, we are dreaming what to do with the archive of content.
Follow us on instagram to see all the new things we are working on, or dreaming up!
a loose index of workshops
Create a Toned Cyanotype Notebook Cover, in response to Yuki Kihara’s Dresstories, New Zealand Portrait Gallery, 2nd May 2026
cyanotype workshop at Te Papa’s Toi Art After Dark evening, 22nd March 2024
Reflecting Rimurimu, cyanotype workshop with Love Rimurimu and Women in Photography NZ + AU, 7th December 2024
a pair of winter workshops: portrait making, film development, and darkroom printing with caffenol, 29th June, 6th July 2024
a series of four workshops on introduction to sustainable and alternative photographic process, as public programmes for the Women in Photography NZ + AU exhibition Susurrations at Twentysix Gallery, February 2023
Winter Workshops: Matchbox Pinhole Cameras, 28th June 2025
The title of the film festival, seeing through a murky gaze, is suggestive of a body in which we can both see, and see through. This duality is descriptive of both water, and of the cloudy potion of seaweed film developer. A murky, turbid liquid that is an active body.
In her essay Turbid Images and Bodies in The Field, Bridget Crone introduces “a watery and indeed optical term - that of ‘turbidity’ - to articulate a specific practice of fieldworking with a camera as a practice of immersion as much as picturing.” The Cambridge Dictionary defines turbid as “(of a liquid) not transparent because a lot of small pieces of matter are held in it”. This sets the tone to expand on this sense of turbidity as a body opaque with matter and sediment. But what is held within that body?
The process of developing analogue film in seaweed is one born from the corners of sustainable photography. Artists engaging with land and ecology turn to plants for their potent effects, and to open a conversation on representation and storytelling - to give plants agency to tell the story of their place.
The rimurimu knowledge shared with the handmade darkroom by Love Rimurimu opened the possibility to create a developer recipe using an invasive species of seaweed such as Wakame. This has formed the opportunity for conservation in our artistic practices; to safely harvest a seaweed species that is overcrowding endemic rimurimu, and then use that life to bring photographs into the visible realm.
1 Crone, Bridget. “Turbid Images and Bodies in the Field”. Fieldwork for Future Ecologies: Radical Practice for Art and Art-based Research. Bridget Crone, Sam Nightingale and Polly Stanton. Onomatopee, 2022.
2 Cambridge English Dictionary, online edition, s.v. “turbid”.
see more about seeing through a murky gaze, here…
Hannah Arnold, Seahorse, 02:38, 2025. Super8 and 16mm film developed with ecklonia radiata seaweed from Ponui Island.
Virginia Woods-Jack, draw me into your vastness, 04:00, 2025. Super8 film developed in wakame seaweed harvested from Te Whanganui-a-Tara coastline
Chloe Mason and Belinda Whitta, water always has a body, 06:00, 2025. Super8 film developed in wakame seaweed harvested from Te Whanganui-a-Tara coastline
potluck slideshow
The Handmade Darkroom, Women in Photography NZ+AU and Splendid Photo are thrilled to present Potluck Slideshow — a community celebration of film photography, shared stories, and moments of wonder.
Taking place on Saturday 8 November 2025 at Innermost Gardens, Mount Victoria, the evening invites photographers, artists and community minded folk from across Aotearoa to submit their best 35mm film images for a collective slideshow — accompanied by a shared table of food, conversation, and connection.
“Potluck Slideshow is about celebrating the beautiful imperfections of film and the people behind the cameras,” says a spokesperson from Women in Photography NZ+AU. “We wanted to create a space that feels less like a competition and more like a community — a warm, creative exchange where everyone is welcome.”
Submissions are free and open until midnight, Sunday 31 October 2025. Photographers may enter up to five landscape-format images shot on 35mm film (colour or black & white), processed either sustainably or by Splendid Photo, who are offering exclusive film processing discounts for entrants.
“The Handmade Darkroom is all about slowing down and engaging deeply with process,” says The Handmade Darkroom facilitators. “Events like this celebrate the tactile joy of film and the shared experience of making — not just the final image.”
Splendid Photo adds, “We’re proud to support a project that uplifts film communities across Aotearoa. It’s a reminder that film photography is alive, well, and thriving in all its grainy glory.”
The event will feature prizes, and an evening filled with laughter, film, and food — a true potluck in every sense.
a palmful of water is the weaving together of photographic works by a collection of artists using alternative or sustainable analogue photography.
Artists Virginia Woods-Jack, Chloe Mason, Jonathan Kay, Moana Lee, Jan Larcombe, Samson Dell, Lily Dowd, and Belinda Whitta have each reflected on and illustrated a different facet of their personal connection with water.
Water offers many points in which to connect and muse upon. It is the body that holds our knowledge and memory. Water carries us to our homelands. We see these artists use water as a lens in which they see the world, a place to belong, or a means for connection. As a reminder to remain fluid, to challenge rigid tradition, and see the fleeting nature in time.
These artists have made alongside earth and water, whether through the realisation of the photograph, the development process, the fluidity, seasonality and queer timeline of the earth, or sometimes water even gifted them the image.
This exhibition is brought to you by The Handmade Darkroom: Te Whanganui-a-Tara Sustainable Photography Collective, and co-curated by Lily Dowd and Belinda Whitta. The Handmade Darkroom brings sustainable, alternative, and cameraless analogue photography processes and methodologies to their community, based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara and beyond.
As part of Susurrations, we hosted an activation for Newtown Festival, where we cyanotype printed and coffee toned individual frames of a stop motion film. The film documented the process from photographing a scene, developing the film in caffenol, and printing cyanotypes.
We later turned the film into a risographed fold-out zine for Zinefest. The carousel-like nature of the zine created a non-narrative style format.
In February of 2023, we hosted a series of four workshops as part of the Women in Photography NZ + AU exhibition Susurrations. The series included lumen printing, developing film with caffenol, printing cyanotypes, and toning cyanotypes.
Event Photographs by Jas Sabrine for our cyanotype workshop, within Susurrations; a Women in Photography NZ + AU in-person event.