Anna Atkins - Exhibition Sheet

Barbara Ciurej & Lindsay Lochman | Collaborative Projects | www.ciurejlochmanphoto.com

About the process

The process of cyanotype involves exposing paper that has been coated with a light-sensitive iron salt solution to UV light (sunlight). Any barrier to exposure (in this instance, the flowers) will be recorded as negative images and render as white shadows on the Prussian blue surface. This is the same process employed in making blueprints.

The original portraits were shot on 4 x 5 negatives, scanned and printed using digital printing methods. The prints were then coated with cyanotype solution, botanicals were arranged on the surface and the coated portrait exposed to sunlight for 3-5 minutes. A water rinse clears the chemicals and the areas that were blocked by the botanicals reveal parts of the underlying portrait.

Honoring Anna Atkins

Anna Atkins (1799-1871) was trained as a botanist, botanical illustrator and naturalist. She is often considered the first person to publish a book illustrated with photographic images and the first woman to create a photograph. She learned the cyanotype process from Sir John Hershel, a family friend, who invented the process in 1842.

Atkins self published her photograms in the first installment of Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions in October 1843. Eight months later, in June 1844, William Henry Fox Talbot’s The Pencil of Nature was commercially published and released. Her efforts established photography as a medium for scientific documentation — her compositions were beautiful as well as useful and accurate.

Atkins’ subsequent botanical albums include Cyanotypes of British and Foreign Ferns (1853) and Cyanotypes of British and Foreign Flowering Plants and Ferns (1854).