The Diamantino Labo Photo, specialized in film printing, has worked for more than thirty years with photographers from all over the world.
“Support the Diamantino Labo Photo workshop against dealers” is the title of the petition launched a few days ago on Change.org by the boss of this photo lab, the last to develop large-scale film photos. The petition had collected more than 2,800 signatures by Tuesday morning.
Three years of daily nuisance
The workshop installed in Bagnolet (Seine-Saint-Denis) is today threatened by the presence of a dozen dealers who remain all day in front of the gate of the building. Sometimes they even allow themselves to enter the lobby to conduct their drug dealing. Despite an attempt to intervene and the use of the police, nothing helped. The situation is untenable.
“The worst is the noise, we need maximum concentration in our work and there, it screams, it screams… Then there is the dirt, the smells, the vomit sometimes in the entrance” , says the boss. “Once, they totally smashed the gate with a ram car. There are days, you almost have to ask them for permission to enter”. In January 2021, Diamantino Quintas tries, with a neighbor, to speak to these dealers to ask them to leave the premises. “They fell on us, they beat us. Luckily, I was not hospitalized.
A feeling of helplessness
Despite the letters addressed to the local authorities, to the Ministers of Culture and of the Interior, the situation has not changed. “The City has installed a “stop park” device in order to limit parking at the entrance to the company”, specifies in an email the team of the PS mayor of Bagnolet, Tony Di Martino. “We are thinking with the competent police authorities in this area about new actions that can be put in place”
Desperate, Diamantino Quintas will not last long in these conditions and at 62, not sure that he will look for a new workshop. Today, it is the survival of his company and of a whole know- do which is at stake.