Well, it’s been over a year since I last wrote one of these but in the time of the Great Lockdown, I thought it’d be the ideal time to delve back into this blogging larke and share some more inspirations!
For the first instalment in 2020, I’d like to focus on an important but often overlooked woman in science and art. Her work was an inspiration to some research I carried out when I was at university but more recently it’s been something I wanted to emulate in my own work. So without further ado I’d like to introduce you to botanist, photographer and Brit, Anna Atkins.
Born in Cranbrook, Kent in 1799, Atkins was a trained botanist, she even collected many of the seaweed specimens herself. But, despite her place in history, comparatively little is known about her artistic and scientific ideas.
In her first artistic undertaking, Anna assisted her father, John George Children, a chemist and mineralogist (and later the keeper of zoology at the British Museum) by hand-drawing more than 200 scientifically accurate illustrations for his translation of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck’s Genera of Shells, published in 1823. Anna’s marriage in 1825 to John Pelly Atkins, a wealthy West India merchant, gave her the time and freedom to pursue her passion for botany. She joined the Royal Botanical Society and collected seaweeds on her trips to English beaches; she also obtained specimens from botanical contacts around the world. By 1835, Children was enthusiastically promoting his daughter’s botanical collection and scientific interests (like any good parent) to his colleagues, including William Hooker, director of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew; William Henry Fox Talbot, the inventor of negative-positive photography; and Sir John Herschel, who happened to be her father’s neighbour.
Her book, Photographs of British Algae, produced between 1843 and 1853, was the first publication illustrated exclusively with light-sensitive materials. Atkins printed and published Part I of British Algae in 1843 and in doing so established photography as an accurate medium for scientific illustration. This was the first application of photography to science—making Atkins the first known female photographer. Interestingly, while Atkins owned a camera, she used only the cameraless photogenic drawing technique to produce all of her botanical images.
What I also love about this book is that instead of traditional letterpress printing for the body copy, it relied on handwritten text.
The light-sensitive method Atkins worked with was an early kind of photography known cyanotype, a process very similar to photograms, think Man Ray.
The technique involves two iron-based chemicals; ferric ammonium citrate and potassium ferricyanide, which are applied onto regular paper (or untreated fabric) and left in the dark to dry. Then, a photo negative or flat object is placed over the paper and exposed to sunlight for several minutes. It’s super tricky trying to get the timings correct with British Weather but 5 minutes in direct sunlight is usually enough for a good exposure.
Next, the sensitised paper is then washed in clean water. The combination of the iron compounds and water create a chemical reaction that produces a Prussian Blue pigment, revealing a deep blue permanent print with the shadow or negative remaining the same colour as the paper.
I’ve always adored the cyanotype process, it’s something I’ve wanted to revisit over the last couple of years but never made the time for it. That said, I finally managed it a few days ago, perfect time to make use of the lockdown! Here are a few photos of one small test I did in my sketchbook:
In this initial test, I coated a page in my sketchbook using a sponge so I could get a rough-edged texture. The design is from an old transparency I made a screen print a few years ago. I placed a small sheet of glass from an old photo frame on top to hold it in place but not obstruct the transparency during the exposure.
The resulting image is gorgeous. Interestingly, sharp in some paces but softer in others which is super nice. I usually like my prints to be pin sharp but this is a style anomaly that works really well with cyanotype (and with several attempted exposures after this, it helps to not aim for perfection!)
What I’m aiming to do is incorporate the cyanotype technique with screen printing to keep up with ht idea of a less digitally reliant process to help me focus on play and experimenting with collage and forcing me to be a bit less of a perfectionist. Doing larger tests (about A3 in size) has been tricky and frustrating at times but rewarding; I’m realising that it takes a lot of practice and understanding of the weather in order to get the best exposure as quite a few of mine have varied between brilliant and a bit shit.
It’s been fun so far though, so while I’ve had some small gaps between tasks in the day job, it’s given me time to fall back in love with a technique I’ve not used since I was at university. I should be uploading some images of the larger test prints soon, and eventually some with screen printed elements on them.