HISTORY

In 1842 and British scientist, Sir John Herschel discovered the cyanotype process, the process is still used today in the same way which produces a white image on top a dark blue background.

Cyanotype is a photographic printing process which engineers used well into the 20th century as a low cost process to produce copies of drawings. This process used two chemicals: ferric ammonium citrate and potassium ferricyanide.

ANNA ATKINS

Anna Atkins was born in Tonbridge, United Kingdom on March 16, 1799 and later died on June 9, 1871. Atkins was a botanical artist, collector and photographer and was the first person to illustrate with photographic images. Anna’s use of new photographic technologies merged art and science, it also exemplified the exceptional potential of photography in books.

When Atkins would create her cyanotypes she used light exposure and a simple chemical mixture to create very detailed blueprints of botanical specimens. She published her images in 1843, in her book Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions, this was the first book to be printed and illustrated by photography.

My Cyanotype

While at Hampton we got to create our own cyanotype, above I put an image of my final piece which I created whilst I was at Hampton, as it was a perfect day to create cyanotypes as it was it was a lovely summer day with warm temperatures. My favourite part of my piece is the feather in the bottom left side that is fading into the background, I like the faded effect of the object going into the background as it was completely unintentional but adds to the aesthetic of the piece. Furthermore, I like the mixture of shapes of the objects at the top of the piece as some objects such as the leaf came out legible and others such as the flower petals to the left turned out muddy and unclear.