Who was Anna Atkins?
The cyanotype process was mostly used by Anna Atkins in her 12 part book British Algae. This was the first book to be illustrated with photos so that made her a pioneer to the new art form. Cyanotypes were the first type of photographs that did not require a camera. They perfectly describe the meaning of photography, photo = light; graph = to draw.
Atkins was a botanist and a illustrator of plants. She discovered the cyanotype process after meeting the inventor Fox Talbot. Atkins neighbour was the astronomer Sir John Herschel and it was him who discovered, in 1842 that when exposed to UV light (the sun) a paper soaked with a iron salt solution captured a blue 'negative' image after the salts have been rinsed away. |
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