Podcast Summary:
New Books Network – Michelle Henning, "A Dirty History of Photography: Chemistry, Fog, and Empire" (U Chicago Press, 2026)
Host: Dr. Miranda Melcher
Guest: Professor Michelle Henning
Date: January 22, 2026
Episode Overview
This episode delves into the distinctive and interconnected history of photography as explored in Michelle Henning’s book, A Dirty History of Photography: Chemistry, Fog, and Empire. Avoiding a typical linear or inventor-focused narrative, Henning examines photography through the lens of materiality, environmental impact, imperialism, and the entangled histories of technology, pollution, and global capitalism. The discussion traces how photography’s development both relied upon and influenced industrial, atmospheric, and colonial worlds – themes with profound relevance even in the digital present.
Key Discussion Points and Insights
1. Motivation and Genesis of the Book
- Henning’s longstanding interest in photography’s materiality and underexplored industrial history.
- Focus on Ilford Limited, Britain’s major manufacturer of black-and-white film and chemicals, a surprisingly unexamined company despite its dominance in the UK market.
- The book emerged from practical, archival, and on-site research, as well as a desire to challenge nostalgic and craft-based visions of “analogue” photography.
Quote:
"People tend to think of analogue as craft based … whereas actually these industries were massive and they had huge kind of global networks."
— Professor Henning (05:30)
Timestamps: [03:06]–[10:37]
2. Book Structure: 36 Short Chapters/‘Snapshots’
- The book comprises 36 chapters (“frames”), echoing a roll of 35mm film, allowing looping narrative threads to develop rather than a single linear argument.
- Chapters blend literary references (e.g. Frankenstein’s monster) and discrete historical or thematic foci—fog, war, latency, and more.
- Enables deep and sometimes tangential, interdisciplinary explorations within the same historical fabric.
Quote:
"I think of these as frames on a film or snapshots … you can build across chapters so you can do this kind of looping back."
— Professor Henning (11:10)
Timestamps: [11:10]–[16:34]
3. Photography as ‘Daughter of Coal’: Industrial Revolution, Empire, and Fossil Fuels
- Photography emerged and flourished alongside coal-driven industrialization and imperial expansion.
- Coal was critical for transportation (steam engines, steamships) and chemical processes such as making coal tar dyes, key to photographic sensitivity and color.
- The global supply chains of minerals, chemicals, and animal products were feasible only with imperial reach.
Quote:
"You have to have an empire and a global trade. So the global trade in minerals, in animal products, in fine chemicals, make photography possible. And the reason I say daughter of coal is because what drives this is coal."
— Professor Henning (18:10)
Timestamps: [17:26]–[24:49]
4. London Fog and Place: Pollutant, Aesthetic, and Cultural Symbol
- London’s notorious fog was both a technical and cultural force: damaging to photographic plates due to chemical contaminants, but also aestheticized as “atmosphere.”
- London photographers struggled to visualize fog due to the limited color sensitivity of early plates, but advancements in the 1920s/30s allowed the fog to become an iconic subject.
- Colonial photographers, informed by these metropolitan aesthetics, evaluated other climates as “good” or “bad” for photography through an ethnocentric, often racialized, lens.
Quote:
"They kind of imagine this kind of damp, foggy, misty climate as the perfect climate for photography, which is ironic. And they always judge other climates against this kind of criteria."
— Professor Henning (29:55)
Timestamps: [24:49]–[30:56]
5. Chemicals, Pollution, Empire, and Colonial Attitudes
- Photographic practice was inherently polluting at every stage: chemical byproducts, effluents, abandoned “waste” embodied imperial and colonial territorial control.
- The right to pollute or extract was synonymous with imperial rights in both thinking and economic practice.
- The racialization of “difficult climates” for photography also extended, metaphorically and practically, to how colonial subjects and ecologies were understood.
Quote:
"Pollution is related to colonialism and empire because it's predicated on territorial claims... there's a kind of mentality associated with kind of unthinking pollution."
— Professor Henning (32:44)
Timestamps: [31:45]–[38:30]
6. Interwar Technological Innovations: Infrared, Panchromatic Films, and Factory Labor
- The 1920s-30s saw development of advanced emulsions for infrared and panchromatic sensitivity, improving accuracy and usability (especially for war photography).
- Panchromatic film enabled true-to-life black-and-white tones, transformative for snapshot photography; its sensitivities also changed the experience of factory and darkroom labor (total darkness required).
- Technological change was both an enabler and a disruptor for workers and consumers.
Quote:
"So panchromatic corrects that. It makes for images that look much more close to the kind of tonal range with which our eyes see the world."
— Professor Henning (41:15)
Timestamps: [38:30]–[44:44]
7. War, Aesthetics, and Chemistry: Poison Gas and Photography
- Photographic and chemical industries were tightly interwoven with military-industrial developments, especially poison gas, derived from the same chemistry as dyes and photographic chemicals.
- Companies like Agfa were both dye and poison gas manufacturers.
- Theoretical discussion of aesthetics and violence: Using Walter Benjamin’s famous essay on mechanical reproduction, Henning draws connections between extolling modern war (as in the Italian invasion of Ethiopia) and the aesthetic uses of both photography and chemical warfare.
Quote:
"Both poison gas and photography are derived ... from the dye stuff industries that came out of the exploitation of coal tar."
— Professor Henning (45:39)
Quote:
"He [Benjamin] says photography and film can be used to aestheticize warfare, or they can be used to challenge it."
— Professor Henning (49:18)
Timestamps: [44:44]–[50:57]
8. Continuing Legacies and New Research Directions
- Henning plans to study mobile phone photography and its changing cultural scripts, comparing contemporary shifts to historic practices and values shaped by industry advertising and manual-writing.
- She aims to extend her examination of how capitalist, colonial, and ecological legacies of photography persist and transform in the digital and environmental present.
Quote:
"I think I want to continue to think this through in relation to questions of colonialism and environment, because those were big things that came out of the book."
— Professor Henning (54:07)
Timestamps: [51:38]–[54:27]
Notable Quotes
-
On the book’s distinctive approach:
"This history, to be honest, is more interesting because we get to talk about how photography is linked to fossil fuels, to the Industrial Revolution, to capitalism, to other forms of art, to air pollution, to extractive empire…"
— Dr. Miranda Melcher (01:37) -
On environmental materiality:
"You can't enter the room that that's happening in because humans would contaminate the space. We have oil on our hands, we flake skin. You can't have any light in there...The machines have to be made of certain metals because metals react to the films and so on."
— Professor Henning (08:54) -
On racialized technological judgement:
"Talking about climate becomes also a kind of covert means of talking about the populations, so the colonized peoples. So it's linked to ideas of compliant or noncompliant photographic subjects..."
— Professor Henning (31:57)
Timestamps for Key Segments
- [03:06] Introduction to project origins and Ilford
- [11:10] Structure of the book explained
- [17:26] Photography’s relationship to the Industrial Revolution and Empire (“daughter of coal”)
- [24:49] London’s fog and the geography of photographic development
- [31:45] Chemicals, pollution, and imperial/colonial mentality
- [38:30] Interwar technological advances and their impacts
- [44:44] Photography, war, and chemical warfare; Walter Benjamin
- [51:38] Henning’s future research directions
Tone and Language
Henning and Melcher maintain an open, thoughtful, and interdisciplinary approach, blending historical scholarship with personal insight and a clear engagement with both technical and cultural detail. Their discussion interweaves academic language with vivid examples accessible to a broad audience.
Conclusion
This episode offers an in-depth look at the unforeseen entanglements between photography’s chemistry and the wider worlds of empire, ecology, and industry. Henning’s book emerges as a rich resource for understanding photography’s dirty—yet deeply revealing—histories and ongoing legacies.