How romanticised images of London fog shaped the way we see polluted air

Researching in the archives of the British photographic company Ilford Limited, I recently came across a curious memo pasted into an experiment book by one of the company’s chemists. Dated January 19 1923, it appears as a small interruption in the page: a practical instruction that “in future, coating of any kind of emulsion must not be commenced or proceeded with during a fog”.

This brief directive was my first clue to a connection between the photographic term “fogging” and the noxious

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