Using Ilford photo paper and film, Baltimore School for the Arts seniors Aleeia Townes, Andrew Selway, Kandice Johnson, Dionna Richardson, Myah Stokes, Sydney Adams, Zoe Jackson, and Freddy Wolfe printed the following works in the school’s darkroom just before the COVID-19 lockdown and cancellation of school for the year.

They’ve spent the last two months of their senior year at home, wrapping up the remainder of their classwork and capturing their final photography projects digitally.

“It’s been a lot slower,” says Wolfe. “The lack of people makes for some very isolated work. I’ve been appreciating nature and being outside much more.”

With the uncertainty surrounding when school structure will eventually resume as normal, Wolfe and his classmates might be the last film students to work hands-on in a darkroom setting for many months ahead.

We hope that this isn’t the case, for their sake and the sake of photography’s future.

The students’ senior showcase was set to take place at the Luann Carra Gallery in Fells Point. In the wake of its cancellation, we’ve compiled a digital gallery of the last images they printed in the darkroom in February and March.

Aleeia Townes

Andrew Selway

Kandice Johnson

Dionna Richardson

Myah Stokes

Sydney Adams

Zoe Jackson

Freddy Wolfe

Under normal circumstances, freelance work, slower in the winter, picks up each spring, says Baltimore contributing photographer Sean Scheidt. This was how he found himself at Patapsco State Park in March.

“I was going stir crazy,” says Scheidt, who shot the following images. “My gym was closed. People told me to work on design projects, but I’m not a graphic designer. I needed to get out of the house and go for a hike.”

The restlessness is genetic. His grandmother has been a Dundalk crossing guard for 52 years, and it was all he could do to keep her inside while he made the grocery runs during the coronavirus outbreak.

In his neighborhood, Scheidt took pictures of church signs explaining services were canceled, a shuttered senior center, empty stores, and highway signs warning against large gatherings.

“At Patapsco, the first thing I saw was the closed playground,” he recalls. “It was eerie. Disconcerting. It’s a place for kids covered with police crime tape. I did a six-mile trail and put one foot in front of the other. It took my mind off things. I took the photograph when I got back.”