What Is Ilsee™?

So, what exactly is this thing?

The short version: Ilsee is a modern mobile darkroom that lets you turn an image on your iPhone into a traditional silver gelatin photographic print.

It sounds a little strange.

That's because it is.

And that's what makes it interesting.

Most of us take photographs on our phones and leave them there. They live in our camera rolls, in messages, on social media, or in the cloud.

Ilsee starts with that digital image and takes it somewhere else.

Somewhere physical.

Somewhere you can hold.

Your iPhone becomes part of the darkroom.

Instead of using a traditional enlarger, Ilsee uses the screen of your iPhone as the light source for exposing photographic paper.

The Ilsee app gives you control over the image and the exposure. The Ilsee hardware holds everything in the right relationship to the photographic paper.

Then you make the print using traditional darkroom chemistry.

The result is a real silver gelatin photograph.

Not an inkjet print.

Not a dye-sublimation print.

Not a photograph that has been printed to look “analog.”

A photographic print made with photographic paper and light.

That's an important distinction to us.

We aren't trying to recreate a digital image with an analog-looking filter. We're using digital technology as a tool inside a physical photographic process.

In other words, we're not replacing the darkroom.

We're rethinking what a darkroom can be.

One of the things we're most excited about is how little equipment the process can require.

A phone.

Ilsee.

Photographic paper.

Chemistry.

And a little bit of space to work.

You don't need a traditional enlarger. You don't need a dedicated darkroom. You don't need to turn an entire room of your house into a permanent photography lab.

You can make a small darkroom almost anywhere.

That's the idea, anyway.

We're still building Ilsee, so there is plenty left to figure out. We're testing hardware, refining the software, making prints, learning what works, and occasionally discovering what very much does not work.

We'll be sharing all of it here.

Because Ilsee isn't finished yet.

We're making it in public.