The Pope's Darkroom
Pope John Paul II In The Hotel Darkroom
After traveling across the country from New Orleans to Los Angeles with 27 cases of equipment the AP traveling darkroom staff settled into a hotel meeting room. Our overnight task was to turn it into a darkroom to handle an unknown number of rolls of film, prints, and analog photo transmissions to a variety of locations domestic and foreign.
When completed, we would leave for Detroit with our 27 cases and leave no trace of having converted the meeting room into a messy, chemical-filled darkroom.
All this for Pope John Paul II’s visit to LA in 1987. Our crew had leapfrogged ahead of the Pope. We began in New Orleans at his stop in the Superdome. Other crews handled his earlier stops in Columbia, South Carolina, and Miami, and the two in San Antonio and Phoenix after New Orleans.
This is how it began, with a trip to Home Depot for building materials.
Our rental van, instead of being loaded with cases of darkroom equipment and luggage, now held enough wooden studs, plastic sheeting both black and clear, nails, foam strips, and tools to build a small workroom inside the meeting room at our hotel.
The room had been reserved with instructions that it would be emptied of all furniture. No chairs, lamps, and tables. We wanted a naked room. New to the room were nine telephone lines installed to handle the volume of photos we would be transmitting.
We would convert the space into a workroom with three rooms. One room to process film. Another to make prints. The third room was set up for editing the film and had enough space for several photo transmitters.
We built flimsy walls just sturdy enough for our temporary one-time use. Our technique was very simple.
First, build a giant plastic condom that covers the walls and floor. Then, using foam insulating strips as cushions to keep out light to make the room dark and to prevent damage to the walls and ceiling from the 2x4s, we built and installed the walls for the three rooms.
Black plastic lined the darkrooms and clear plastic covered everything else. Even the rented tables were covered in plastic to prevent stains from chemicals.
AP photographer’s film from the visit was handled by the LA AP bureau. Our job was to handle all the film, printing, and transmitting for newspaper photographers traveling with the Pope or having come to LA for photo coverage. Everyone would be on deadline and wanting their prints transmitted as quickly as possible.
When the Pope’s feet left the ground in LA, our job was done. Except for tearing down the workspace we’d built the day before leaving no trace that we’d been there except for 2x4s sticking out of garbage bags.
Then on to Detroit for another Papal construction job.
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