Anna Atkins was an English photographer and botanist noted for her early use of photography for scientific purposes. Some sources claim that she was the first woman to create a photograph. She created the first book to contain photographs, and she paved the way for photography’s power to connect people. In particular, she was interested in the cyanotype process devised by Herschel in 1842, which can produce an image by what is commonly called sun-printing.
The substance to be recorded is laid on paper impregnated with ferric ammonium citrate and potassium ferricyanide. When exposed to sunlight and then washed in plain water the uncovered areas of the paper turn a rich deep blue. Eventually this process, known as blueprinting, was used mainly to reproduce architectural and engineering drawings.
Atkins learned directly about the invention of photography through her correspondence with its inventor, William Henry Fox Talbot. Although she owned a camera, she used only the cameraless photogenic drawing technique to produce all of her botanical images. With the assistance of Anne Dixon, Atkins created albums of cyanotype photogenic drawings of her botanical specimens. She learned the cyanotype printing method through its inventor, the astronomer and scientist Sir John Herschel. He had been experimenting with sun prints (or “photograms”) ie. cameraless and lenseless photographs.
She was so disappointed by the lack of illustrations of algae in a guide to British algae published in 1841 that she decided to do something about it. In the autumn of 1843 she began work on creating images of hundreds of different types. “Looking at Atkins’s book today, what is most striking is not the outlines of the algae, however beautifully and delicately they crawl across the pages; it is the glorious depth of the Prussian blue backdrop to the images. The Herschel method dyed the paper, resulting in every page of the book being a deep blue with the algae outlines in cream. (A byproduct of the process was the addition of the word “blueprint” to the English language.)”- The Guardian
‘Before Atkins’s book on British algae and the photographic process, botanical images would have been restricted to the traditional printing processes of engraving or woodcuts, although the art of nature printing was also in its early stages around Atkins’s time’
Before the invention of photography, scientists relied on detailed descriptions and artistic illustrations or engravings to record the form and colour of botanical specimens. Anna’s self-published her detailed and meticulous botanical images using the cyanotype photographic process in her 1843 book, Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions. With a limited number of copies, it was the first book ever to be printed and illustrated by photography. The text pages and captions were photographic facsimiles of Anna’s handwriting. In some cases, lettering appears to be formed by delicate strands of seaweed. After her book on algae, she collaborated with Anne Dixon on at least two more botanical books, Cyanotypes of British and Foreign Ferns and Cyanotypes of British and Foreign Flowering Plants and Ferns.
“The difficulty of making accurate drawings of objects so minute as many of the Algae and Confervae has induced me to avail myself of Sir John Herschel’s beautiful process of Cyanotype, to obtain impressions of the plants themselves, which I have much pleasure in offering to my botanical friends.” Anna Atkins (1843, text accompanying the first photographically illustrated book)
Collection of her work:https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/collections/photographs-of-british-algae-cyanotype-impressions#/?tab=navigation
I want to take inspiration from Anna Atkins as I think that her images have a spiritual quality to them as they emphasises the delicate lines and shapes of the nature. To interpret her work I play to make my own cyanotypes by using light sensitive paper for experimentation. If this process does not turn out well I will produce images that interpret the appearance of her work through post editing. I also like the prussian blue colour that all of the cyanotypes have which I think fit well into my project where I have explored cool and warm colours. If my interpretation of her work was successful and I wanted to include the images in my final outcomes, I could contrasts the cool blue tones with the warm tones of other images from my project. I also think that i could use the physical photograms I make in my photobook, rather than just a picture of them, as it would allow the readers to physically hold them and would mean that those images would’ve truly been created without a camera. I also think the fact that the images are created without the use of camera links to my project as it just using nature to create and process i.e sunlight and plants.