Henning, Michelle 
ORCID: 0000-0003-3798-7227
(2024)
Photography's Other Sensitivities.
Media Theory, 8 (1).
pp. 79-106.
ISSN 2557-826X, 2557-826X
Abstract
This article sets out to challenge the idea of photography as a medium that deals purely in the visible. Taking the example of the mid-twentieth-century British photography industry, this article considers photographic sensitivity as part of a sensory economy in which human, technological and environmental sensing are mutually entangled. I emphasise these interlinked sensing systems, and what I see as the “passive agency” of photographic materials, showing how photographic emulsions are capable of registering much more than visible light or even radiation. Chemical photographic materials had distinct cultural biases built into them, yet often registered entities other than those they were designed to picture. Great effort went into restricting photographic sensitivities, as well as into cultivating them. By the 1930s, the photographic materials factories had air purification and climate control systems, sensitometry laboratories and specialist tropical materials. Their sensitised materials and chemicals transformed ecosystems and participated in a “technological sensory training”, shaping what people could perceive.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Divisions: | Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of the Arts |
| Depositing User: | Symplectic Admin |
| Date Deposited: | 17 Feb 2025 08:57 |
| Last Modified: | 17 Feb 2025 08:57 |
| Open Access URL: | https://doi.org/10.70064/mt.v8i1.1069 |
| Related Websites: | |
| URI: | https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3190331 |
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