Our Story

A Room with Walls, and Without Them

Unofficially, our story begins at Winifred’s kitchen table. Where family photo albums and the colorful stories that flowed from them entertained her granddaughter and Cleveland Print Room founder, Shari Wilkins.

Those moments, and her family’s love of photography, inspired Shari to build a career collecting vintage photographs. She then collected vintage darkroom equipment and focused on building a special place to recreate her beloved photos.

Her passion project became Cleveland Print Room. A community darkroom, gallery, and education center. CPR gave Shari an opportunity to bring together partners, artists, and photography enthusiasts from all over the world to see life through a new lens and carry these time-honored techniques forward.

“Relationship and connectedness are the pre-condition for change. Every meeting, every process, every training program has to get people connected first. Otherwise the content falls on deaf ears. So small groups are an essential building block to any future you want to create.”

— Peter Block

Today, as we continue toward a new vision, Shari and Co-Director, Kerry Davis, are relocating CPR from the historic ArtCraft building to a 12,000 square-foot, adaptive reuse industrial space, and repurposing it into an environmentally responsible, state-of-the-art facility.

The new home will allow more space and resources. It will enable us to center and expand our work around the image, support the work of artists, challenge the conventions of photography, and strengthen our focus. We remain solidly and steadfastly grounded in our mission—to increase accessibility.

Cleveland Print Room is lighting a new path forward.