HALIDE — C-Type Colour Studio

A woman blindfolded with red silk against red velvet

NEG — 001

f/8 · 12s · 55Y 40M

I print what the negative refuses to admit.

Ivo Marchetti — printer, Sheffield

SELECTED CLIENTS

Tate Modern
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Verso Quarterly
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Anvil Press
·
Salt Marsh Atlas
·
The Bindery
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Cam66
·
Kunsthalle Basel
·
Analog Archives
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Latent

001

Expose

002

Develop

003

Fix

004

Sheffield · working in colour, motion and print

Scroll to enlarge ↓

The case — 001

Four commissions · hover any frame

See all the work →

Four rooms, four hours, four completely different arguments about light.

Every one of these started as a phone call and a rough idea. What survives to the print is never what was described — it is what the room turned out to be doing while everyone was busy describing it. These four are the ones where the difference was worth keeping.

A lit shopfront still trading after the last train — ShopfrontEditorial

A visitor standing in front of a row of hung photographs — HungDocumentary

The long room, empty, light from the far window — Long RoomInteriors

The sitter against a plain wall in north light — HeldPortrait

The dark — 002

Move the light

You can only see what the light is on.

A print lifted from the tray under the safelight — Hold — 2021

A figure lit outside a house at night — Brim — 2022

A corridor to an arched window — Turn — 2023

A print resting in the developer — Rest — 2024

The lamp

Amber · 15W · two metres up, pointed at the ceiling

Safe for

Colour paper is blind to every safelight. We print in the dark, or not at all

The catch

Every extra minute under it quietly costs the highlights

The spine — 003

Unit 4 · every print · no exceptions

The process in full →

Six steps, in order, every time.

None of the six is difficult on its own. The order is the whole skill: each step forgives a small mistake made in the one before it, and forgives nothing at all about the one after.

Fixed

Six steps · no substitutions · no shortcuts

Variable

Time, temperature, and how long you wait to decide

Never

Two prints from the same sitting on the same day

In the dark

Load

The negative goes into the carrier blind, by feel. Dust is the enemy and dust always wins a little.

12s at f/8

Expose

Twelve seconds through a 55Y 40M pack. The test strip already told us this an hour ago.

90 seconds

Develop

Ninety seconds face down. The image arrives all at once and never stops being strange.

10 seconds

Stop

Ten seconds. The moment you decide it is finished is the only irreversible one in the room.

5 minutes

Fix

Five minutes. This is the step that makes it last a hundred years instead of five.

40 minutes

Wash

Forty minutes of running water. Nobody watches this part. It matters more than the rest.

Window light laid in a grid across a floor

The filter — 004

Cooler first, then warmer

Colour is a decision made after the picture.

Warm · 100%

As shot

A crossing at dusk, printed with no pack — StraightNo pack

Cool · +10C

A shopkeeper behind glass, dialled ten cyan — ColdPlus ten cyan

Warm · +10Y

A figure in low sun, dialled ten yellow — WarmPlus ten yellow

First

Plus ten cyan, three minutes at 35°C, agitated by hand

Then

Plus ten yellow, second pass, wash for an hour

Why

It moves the blacks a long time before it moves anything else

The grain — 005

Weight 100 → 900

Grain is not noise. It is the picture arriving.

Enlarge far enough and the image stops being a photograph and becomes the silver that recorded it. That is the point at which most people stop enlarging. It is the point at which this studio starts.

The archive — 006

Cold storage · 2015—2026

Open the archive →

Square

—

2018

Wash

—

2019

Fold

—

2020

Field

—

2021

Weave

—

2022

Wall

—

2023

The wall — 007

Twelve frames · one afternoon

Pinned in the order they were shot, not the order they were liked. The sequence is the argument — pull one out and the other eleven stop making sense.

A man in a doorway on a working street — Frame 01Colour

A figure passing a green-lit wall — Frame 02Form

An intersection at dusk, two people and a dog — Frame 03Motion

A square at night, figures crossing under lamps — Frame 04Light

A narrow street under a pink dusk sky — Frame 05Object

Shopfronts closed, the sky still light — Frame 06Field

A cobbled street of shops at last light — Frame 07Colour

A lit stall on a dark street — Frame 08Form

A crowd crossing into low sun — Frame 09Motion

A man photographed where he was standing — Frame 10Light

A boy in a striped shirt, available light — Frame 11Object

A woman outside a lit shopfront at night — Frame 12Field

The quote — 008

Reel 07 · 41:12 · Unit 4, Sheffield

A negative is only a set of instructions. The print is the argument.

— Ivo Marchetti, on why he still will not send a file

A man in the doorway of his shop — IvoUnit 4 · Sheffield

Sitting where he answers the phone, because it is the only chair in the room.

Photographed in the darkroom he has not moved out of since 2019, two hours after the print above came out of the wash. He talks about a negative the way a joiner talks about timber — a material with a grain that will let you do some things and quietly refuse the rest.

Recorded

Reel 07 · 41:12 · Nagra IV-S

16×20 Fujiflex · C-type · 55Y 40M

Wash

Two hours, running, no shortcut

Room

Unit 4 — unchanged since 2019

Sent

Never. The print, or nothing

Transcript pulled from the reel. Nothing here was tidied up afterwards.

Decoded

Transcript pulled from the reel. Nothing here was tidied up afterwards.

Decoded

What he means by it

Two printers can be handed the same negative and come back with pictures that disagree about what happened. The file is the instruction. The paper is the sentence someone finally decided to say out loud.

The two he was arguing about

Both printed the same week

A photographer at her desk, choosing the frame — BenchFujiflex · 16×20

Someone at a desk under a plant — DoorwayFujiflex · 16×20

The press — 009

Hold the switch

Twelve seconds you have to be there for.

A figure against an orange wall in low sun

12.0s

00s — open

Full sheet, no card in the way

04s — dodge

Left third held back, hand never still

08s — burn

Sky only, through a card with a hole in it

12s — close

Lamp off. Nothing about it is adjustable now

The plate — 010

Edition of 12 · 16×20 Fujiflex

Every print is made by hand, one at a time.

Edition

Twelve · numbered and signed on the verso

Paper

16×20 Fujiflex, C-type, dry mounted

Closing

When the twelfth is sold the negative is retired

The index — 011

Shown, held, printed for.

Tate Modern
·
Verso Quarterly
·
Anvil Press
·
Salt Marsh Atlas
·
The Bindery
·
Cam66
·
Kunsthalle Basel
·
Analog Archives
·

Hover to hold the line still.

A corner house on a working street — Tate Modern2024

A square, mid-afternoon — Verso Quarterly2023

A corner building, flat light — Anvil Press2022

A shopping street with nobody on it — Salt Marsh Atlas2021

The order — 012

Commissions open for 2026.

Four commissions a year, no more. Tell me what the negative is, what size you want it, and when you need it in your hands. I answer every message myself, usually within two days.

Write to the studio

hello@halide.studio

This opens your own mail app — nothing is collected by this page.

Unit 4, Sheffield S1 · By appointment only

Loop · no sound

The reel — 013

Everything above this line was still. This is what it looked like moving.

Motion work, shot on the same commissions and cut down to the seconds that hold. No sound — the room already had enough of that.

TEST STRIP

f/8 · 2s