The memo was attached to a page otherwise dedicated to photographic fog. In chemical photography, \u201cfogging\u201d describes an effect caused by chemical contamination or light leaks during the processing of prints or negatives, producing a mist-like veil across the image. <\/p>\n
In the experiment book, the memo registers the intrusion of London smog itself \u2013 laden with chemical pollutants, not least sulphurous compounds \u2013 which reacted with the silver in photographic emulsions. The fog therefore disrupted not only photographic manufacture, but also the taking and processing of photographs.<\/p>\n
London\u2019s fog literally fogged photographs with the yellowish hue of the capital\u2019s notorious \u201cpea-soupers\u201d. This presented difficulties for early \u201corthochromatic\u201d photographic emulsions, which were insensitive to orange and red (which appear darker in a positive print). <\/p>\n
In the 1920s and 30s, British press photographers sent out to capture the winter fog found it hard to prevent the fog from appearing very dark because of this. But it was also difficult to get decent exposures because of the reduced light<\/a>.<\/p>\n Press photographers also struggled to protect their glass plates and films within the camera or the darkroom. The fog seemed to penetrate even the interior of portrait studios, via chimneys or even keyholes. <\/p>\n A woman adapts an old war time gas cape into a \u2018smog mask\u2019 to protect against the polluted fog in 1950s London. Movie studios similarly found it virtually impossible to keep out the fog<\/a>, which both softened the picture and muffled the sound, just as the talkies were being introduced. Yet despite these difficulties there is a proliferation of fog photographs from the interwar period and from the 1950s. Many still circulate today in online collections<\/a> devoted to historical images of London.<\/p>\n The fogs were significant, newsworthy events. They were highly toxic: it\u2019s estimated that more than 4,000 people died<\/a> as a result of the fog of 1952, which led to the Clean Air Act of 1956. Yet far from communicate the poisonous dangers of urban atmospheric pollution, the press photographs often seem to emphasise the beauty and mystery of the fog. <\/p>\n The photographs in the magazine Picture Post\u2019s photo-feature \u201cFoggy Morning\u201d (January 21 1939), as in many press photos, made the most of the picturesque opportunities given by artificial lighting in the fog: headlamps, flares, neon advertising lights and traffic lights. <\/p>\n They also made use of the ways in which fog transforms familiar figures and landmarks into silhouettes. The accompanying text claimed the images represented a \u201cnatural beauty \u2026 the beauty of atmosphere\u201d, going so far as to say: \u201cA foggy morning in London is as beautiful as an Arctic night, if shorter.\u201d <\/p>\n One reader of Picture Post, Ernest Restell, wrote to complain about the feature. He objected not simply to the claims made in the article but to the fact that the \u201cpictures were so beautiful, for fog is an ugly harmful thing\u201d. Which \u2013 as he goes on to point out, is the concentrated result of the \u201cinefficient combustion of raw coal\u201d (combined with meteorological conditions). <\/p>\n Today, some writers argue<\/a> that sublime beauty is a way to make photographs of environmental destruction more impactful, while others share Restell\u2019s concern<\/a> that spectacular images detract from attention to the causes of pollution and climate change. <\/p>\n It\u2019s tempting to see beauty as intrinsic to the photograph or to the scene itself, but it was a technical struggle to photograph the London fog, and photographers drew on existing pictorial traditions to do so, in the process suppressing and concealing the foulness of the air.<\/p>\n The art of fog<\/p>\n There was already a nostalgia associated with the London fog in which the romantic visual effects of the filthy air were inseparable from ideas about the might of the industrial, imperial centre at its 19th-century peak. <\/p>\n Impressionist painters, notably Claude Monet, had been drawn to the London fog. And in photography, the pictorialists (photographers keen to establish the medium as an expressive art form) followed the impressionists in their attraction to mist and fog<\/a> as a means to convey emotional as well as physical atmosphere. <\/p>\n By the 1930s, pictorialism was a popular aesthetic in Britain. Encouraged by magazines such as The Amateur Photographer and Cinematographer, the amateur photography scene was dominated by an aesthetic of atmosphere. The British Journal of Photography, as early as 1898, lambasted \u201cmud-and-slush photographers\u201d who would seek out bad weather conditions and foggy atmosphere for aesthetic effect.<\/p>\n Waterloo Bridge in the Fog by Claude Monet (1903). Fog allowed photography to be expressive, it introduced mystery through softening and blurring effects but also a shallowness to the pictorial space, an aesthetic of silhouettes and lighting effects anticipating film noir, especially films like The Third Man (1949), with their dramatic use of night-time urban lighting, smoke and shadow. <\/p>\n In the hands of the press photographers, it gave rise to a distinctive repertoire, of London buses and archways, policemen with their distinctive helmets and white gloves, lamplighters and classical buildings outlined in the mist. The fog appeared as an opaque backdrop against which an increasingly cliched and nostalgic image of the imperial city could emerge, at a time when Britain\u2019s colonies were fighting for independence. <\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/file-20260106-56-vx0kx2.jpg\")
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\n Smith Archive<\/a><\/p>\n![\"painting](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/file-20260106-56-kml0be.jpg\")
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\n Denver Art Museum<\/a><\/p>\n
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