Robert Burley

Not far from my home in Toronto, Canada, lies a road called Photography Drive. After driving by its sign several times, intrigued (I'm new in town), I researched where the name came from and learned that until 2005, that road led to a large Kodak film manufacturing plant. Of the once sprawling industrial complex, only one building remains standing today. The dilapidated shell of the former Kodak employee centre is a striking reminder of how sudden the death of analogue photography came.

A professor at Ryerson University in Toronto and an experienced photographer, Robert Burley lived the global demise of the film giants firsthand. The Disappearance of Darkness is the result of a decade spent documenting the end of an era. From Kodak Heights in Toronto, Burley traveled the world to fixate - on photographic film - the remains of a once formidable industry. To any photographer, his impeccable, almost clinical images are both a delight in exposing an industrial process that used to be veiled in secrecy, and a distressing reminder that this very secrecy means that an immense body of knowledge was irremediably lost in the rapid dismantlement of film-processing plants...

Burley invites the reader to reflect on the past but doesn't limit himself to a nostalgic backward glance. Photography is not dead, it has evolved. Photographic film is not dead either, it moved from a mass staple to a niche product. This is a good book, and all good books end with a message: that of putting it back on the shelf after reading, going out, and taking a few more photographs.… (altro)