Photochemistry, Atmosphere and Affect in the Case of Ilford Limited 1914-45
When:
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Venue:
Birkbeck Main Building, Malet Street
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How can we think of photochemistry as part of the varied means by which sensory experience and affect are reconfigured in modernity? Hard/dry technologies have been understood in this way (think of Walter Benjamin’s assertion that cinema met the modern spectator’s altered sensorium 'halfway'). Analogies such as prosthetics have been used to explain the way in which photography extends human capacities, but such analogies generally invoke mechanical or optical objects (a prosthetic limb or a pair of glasses).
This paper explores how chemical innovations in photography between 1914 and 1945 transformed not just photographs but the material conditions of everyday experience, shaping new kinds of perception, sensation and affect. Drawing on recent work on affective atmospheres, feeling and mood, and on the Ilford company’s archives, this paper outlines Henning’s first attempts at this kind of photographic history.
Contact name:
Patrizia Di Bello