The Darkroom-San Francisco Bay Area: photography classes, workshops, tours

ContraCostaTimes.com

Reviving the lost art of self-discovery

By Robert Taylor
CONTRA COSTA TIMES

Paula Hansen is back in dance class after 40 years, doing pirouettes among teenage girls, getting a "ballet buzz" that helps her fly through the rest of the day.

"It's my time again," she says.

Hilda Robinson put herself on the back burner while she raised her family and worked at office jobs -- "it was 20 years before I got back to art!"

Both women speak for a number of East Bay residents who have dared to revive their early passion for the arts. Sometimes they do it when children are on their own, or a career is drawing to a close. But sometimes they see a window of opportunity and leap through it.

Here are the stories of five people who were inspired by music, dance, photography and art as youngsters, who sidetracked their ambitions and then finally -- wholeheartedly -- plunged in again.

Jerry Ott

Jerry Ott of Martinez was one of those kids who made posters for high school dances, built sets for stage shows and designed floats for homecoming parades.

He was heading for art school after graduation, but then reality set in. Ott went to work full time, became an auto mechanic, and moved to the Bay Area from Milwaukee in the 1960s. In the East Bay, he's best known as the man behind Jerry Ott VW Repair in Pacheco and, for 20 years, Concord.

That's behind him now, and art has one again bubbled to the surface. At 64, Ott has retired from the auto-repair business and devotes much of his time to the Darkroom, a center for workshops and traditional photo printing on Alhambra Avenue in Martinez.

Ott has also returned to his early interest in photography, and there's currently an exhibit of his work in the Darkroom's gallery space. "I've always been interested in photography," he says. "I remember my uncle handing me a camera when I was 7 or 8 years old."

Even more gratifying now, he says, is teaching photography, inspiring students, keeping the traditional art alive in a digital camera age. Anyone can point and click: "That's one of the reasons photography has always been art's stepchild."

He still champions black-and-white photography that uses film, enlargers, printing paper and chemicals. For anyone who has worked in a darkroom -- even a makeshift setup in the bathroom at home -- the chemical smell of Ott's photo center is a jolt from the past.

Ott set up the Darkroom 11 years ago, although he continued repairing Volkswagens for another eight years. His goal was to provide a place for photographers like himself, who treasure traditional techniques, to print and process their works.

It wasn't an easy transition as he edged toward retirement from the car repair business.

"I would go into the darkroom and I would still be thinking VWs," he says. "My wife, Linda, helped turn my mind around. She said, 'There are other things you know how to do. There is something you have a passion for. You are a photographer.'"

Ott will pack his Nikon later this month and head for Yellowstone National Park, where he hopes to get some "non-cliched" black-and-white photographs. "I won't set up my camera at Old Faithful," he vows. "That just ain't gonna happen."

If he gets the images he wants and puts them on exhibit, they will carry his professional credit, J. Michael Ott. "Jerry," he says, "has too much grease on it."

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