The first to publish a book illustrated with photographs, 19th-century botanist and artist Anna Atkins and her work with cyanotypes began a new era in scientific documentation, writes Rosanna Morris
PHOTOGRAPHY SPECIAL: CYANOTYPES
During the pioneer age of photography, when Louis Daguerre and William Henry Fox Talbot were unveiling their inventions, a woman named Anna Atkins published 15 copies of a book entitled Photographs of British Algae. The albums had striking Prussian blue covers and inside contained page after page of beguiling, ghostly white silhouettes of algae and seaweed captured against the same rich blue pigment.
It was 1843 and a book of this kind had never been produced before. Not only was it the first photographically illustrated book, but it was also the first publication to explore the technical and artistic possibilities of the cyanotype, invented by chemist Sir John Herschel a year earlier. It brought together photography and botany – two major subjects of the Victorian age – and the results were scientifically accurate and intensely beautiful.
In the foreword of her unsigned book, Anna penned: “The difficulty of making accurate drawings of objects so minute as many of the algae 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.”
This seemingly high-tech cyanotype involved a simple photochemical process. Salt loaded with iron was spread on to paper, an object arranged on the paper, then exposed to sunlight, which caused a chemical reaction. A negative outline of the object would then become visible when the paper was submerged in water and the paper oxidised. The method was easy to master, and is still a popular artistic medium today. But in the days before cameras, creating these photograms must have felt like magic. And what Anna produced in the succeeding 10 years was extraordinary: several volumes and thousands of impressions of plants using this technique.
SCIENTIFIC UPBRINGING
Anna was born in Tonbridge, Kent, in 1798 and lost her mother when she was a few months old. She was brought up by her father George John Children, the son of a landowner and banker. John was interested in mineralogy and chemistry and was deeply immersed in the scientific community. His profession
