John Spinks – The Shot I Never Forgot

JOHN SPINKS – THE SHOT I NEVER FORGOT

My interest in photography started at secondary school.

There was a cleaners cupboard that had been converted into a darkroom, a darkroom that didn’t work.

There was no paper and the chemicals were rotten, years out of date.

The wonderful thing about this place however was that it meant that I could hide, that I could spend an hour every day, in those last few months of school away from everyone else.

without the least exaggeration, that tiny room was my salvation.

Because of this when I started at the local technical college the following September I opted to do a photography course.

This picture is one of the enlargers I used in those first few months of learning all about photography.

I made this picture around eight or nine years ago, I went back to the technical college, back to that darkroom just before they tore it down.

i spent countless hours in that room, it was the place where I started becoming me.