"I love the smell of Amadol in the morning...smells like...HISTORY!"
All seriousness aside, in REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST, Proust mentions that even
a waft of a whiff of his deceased mother's perfume brought intense visual and
other memories of time with her flooding into his consciousness. Those of us
who were raised on chemical photography will probably always have a strange
form of nostalgia for certain smells; the sharp smell of acetic acid stop bath,
the slightly sulfurous smell of degenerating thiosulfate ions, and for me, the
chemical refinery smell of Amadol. I first smelled it at RIT when we did sensi
strips comparing various developing agents. Then, when I started doing my
personal work around 93 after my advertising/fashion career, I started mixing
Adam's amadol dev. Dektol had its own smell but not as interesting as Amadol.
I also loved the smell of 35mm film, especially color, when I first opened the
canister, originally metal, then plastic. It was some unique combination of
sweetness, paint, and chemicals.
Just some nostalgic thoughts for a Friday morning...
CHEERS!
BOB
