Brian Tryon is developing rolls of 35-millimeter film in a darkroom. He unfurls a roll he’s already processed and holds it to the light to get an early look at what’s there.

Whatever he sees there, it’s a success.

“Even if it’s not ideally what I wanted, it’s still, ‘I did that. I created that. It was something I created from my soul through this process,’” he says.

When Brian talks about the soulfulness of his connection with photography, it comes from a raw and honest place. He’s 11 years sober, and more than a dozen years clean. Photography has played a significant role in his recovery.

While in the darkroom, Brian, 46, shares with Humanitou about the fog of alcoholism and the guilt he still can’t shake. He talks about B-boying in the 80s and why he opts for film over digital photography.

Brian, now a grandfather and a prolific artist, pays forward his life lessons. He teaches photography at Community Prep School, and teaches darkroom classes at the Manitou Art Center in Manitou Springs, Colo.

“There’s positives out of negatives,” he says. True of photography, true of life.

Meet Brian Tryon.

Read the full story here.

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