ARCHIVO WEBINAR SERIES 2026

LOCATING ATMOSPHERE  

IN THE PHOTOGRAPHIC ARCHIVE

PROFESSOR MICHELLE HENNING

This talk draws on my experience researching in the archives of the British Photographic company Ilford Limited and revisiting my archival notes to address questions of ecology and atmosphere in writing my new book A Dirty History of Photography: Chemistry, Fog and Empire (2026). In particular, my work engages with the sensitivity of photographic materials and their ability and difficulties in recording atmosphere. I understand atmosphere both in relation to questions of climate, weather and air, and in relation to the aesthetic and affective: the meanings and feelings conveyed and evoked by photographs.

In this paper, I’ll discuss the different climate and atmospherically sensitive products manufactured by the photographic companies in the interwar period (1920s and ‘30s), the ways in which the industry attempted to control and suppress certain kinds of sensitivities while heightening others, the recalcitrance of materials, which don’t always work as intended – and the relationship between meteorological and affective atmosphere as they meet on the surface of the photographic plate.

Professor Michelle Henning is Chair in Photography and Media at the University of Liverpool, United Kingdom.

She has been writing about photography since the mid- 1990s, publishing numerous chapters and articles and two monographs on photography: Photography: The Unfettered Image (Routledge 2018) and A Dirty History of Photography: Chemistry, Fog and Empire (University of Chicago Press 2026). She also works as an artist in various media.