Smoke gets in your eyes, but so does smog and the many ultra-fine particles suspended in the increasingly polluted air of major urban areas. The word “smog” was coined in the early 20th century from the words smoke and fog, and was intended to refer to what was sometimes known as pea soup fog, a familiar and serious problem in London from the 19th century to the mid-20th century, caused by the burning of large amounts of coal within the city. Modern smog, is a type of air pollution derived principally from emissions of vehicles with internal combustion engines. Industrial fumes, in addition react in the atmosphere with sunlight to form secondary pollutants that also combine with the primary emissions to form photochemical smog. Add the smoke from fires and the occasional ash eruption and you’ve got an excellent, albeit toxic, means of achieving spectacular and surreal photographic images of everyday life in major cities around the world.