Full Description
An environmental history of chemical photography through the lens of its deep connections to empire and industry.
Dependent on the extractive practices of fossil-fueled industrial capitalism, chemical photography's emulsions and films were highly sensitive to polluted atmospheres, and photographic companies had to work hard to control this sensitivity. Drawing on histories of empire, coal, and chemistry and from the archives of British photographic manufacturer Ilford Limited, Michelle Henning exposes the ways photography shaped how we see and understand the atmosphere while leaving its toxic residues in the air, soil, and water.
Structured as thirty-six short chapters and with over seventy illustrations, this innovative book begins in interwar London, follows the supply of Ilford products to photographers on the West African coast, and considers photography as a military technology linked to the development of chemical warfare. Combining close readings of photographs with discussions of low-light, tropical, and aerial photography, Henning examines the extraction and development of photographic materials, their role in the current environmental crisis, and how they have shaped experiences of time and the environment.
Contents
01. The Creature
02. Archive
03. Photosensitivity
04. A Daughter of Coal
05. High Street Chemist
06. The Meuse Valley Fog
07. The Terror and the Beauty
08. Trouble with Fog
09. How to Photograph Fog
10. The Pathetic Fallacy
11. Breathing the Light
12. Bodies in Flight
13. Night Photography
14. Worldings
15. Photography in the Tropics
16. Into the Air
17. Pyrrhic Victories
18. War Is Beautiful
19. Abolishing the Aura
20. The Coal Tar Complex
21. The Chemists' War
22. Out of Thin Air
23. Overexposed
24. Hotwells
25. Encapsulation
26. Keeping Out the Fog
27. Pockets of Exception
28. Regulation and Exposure
29. Year Without a Summer
30. The Gall
31. The Latent Image
32. Chrysalids
33. Memory Traces
34. Bad Air
35. Kidnap Girl Mystery
36. The Black Triangle
Acknowledgments
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index
