How Iconic Photos of the Past Were Edited in the Dark Room (8 photos)

Pablo Inirio is a master printmaker based at Magnum Photos' New York headquarters. He personally worked on some of the agency's most famous images. Recently, prints he made appeared online, complete with extensive annotations, revealing the extent of Inirio's work and attention to detail.







This image by Dennis Stock captures James Dean in Times Square.

This test print shows the enormous amount of work that went into achieving the finished photograph's appearance.

The lines and circles represent Inirio's plans for increasing and decreasing the image's contrast under the enlarger; the numbers scattered throughout the photo indicate the varying exposure times of the paper.

Here are a few more similar prints:



Portrait of Muhammad Ali, taken in 1966 by Thomas Hepker.



Portrait of Henri Cartier-Bresson, taken during the Martin Luther King Jr. march in Washington.



Portrait of Audrey Hepburn, photographed by Dennis Stock.





These photos were posted on Magnum Photos' Twitter account in 2009, with the caption: "Pablo Inirio, our printer, at work."

And here's what Sarah Coleman, author of the Literate Lens blog, writes about Inirio and his work in photo labs:

"Among the photos scattered around his small darkroom, you can find the famous portrait of James Dean in Times Square, or a photo of Che Guevara smoking a cigar... The prints are covered with intricate symbols and numbers; "These are complex formulas that Inirio develops before printing."

But will the magic of this process survive in our new digital age, she asks.

"Over the past 15 years, almost every photographer I've interviewed has waxed poetic about that 'magical' feeling of seeing an image develop under the influence of chemicals for the first time. It makes you wonder if today's young photographers will also sing the praises of calibrating their monitor for the first time."