Flax & Feather Designs
‘Adopt the pace of nature
her secret is patience’
PROCESS
The cyanotype technique was invented in 1841 by astronomer John Herschel but it was the work of botanist Anna Atkins who secured the place of cyanotypes in the creation of botanical imagery.
Her book ‘Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions’, comprises of 424 cyanotypes, also known as “shadowgraphs”. These beautiful volumes, published over ten years from 1843, are recognised as the first ever photographically illustrated books.
Cyanotypes or ‘sun prints’ are created through an historical alternative photographic process that results in a cyan-blue ‘print’.
A mixture of iron compounds is applied to paper, which when exposed to UV light and washed in water, oxidises to create a range of Prussian blues.
The resultant image is influenced by the intensity of the light, the material and toners used, and the objects that create a negative image on the surface.
Silver-based photographic processes were being developed at the same time and replaced cyanotypes as a stable means of creating positive journalistic prints into the twentieth century. As another century turned on the millennium, digital cameras took the evolution of the process further, pushing the artistic potential of photography into hitherto unthought-of directions.
Yet in a time when our lives are bound to digital processes, the simplicity and lack of certainty involved in the cyanotype process is artistically liberating. The relationship between sunlight and found objects from the natural world is transformed by the cyanotype process; it requires patience and resilience in the artist, accepting that one must ‘expect the unexpected,’ a joyful and magical experience captured on paper.
Find out more …
If you would like to learn more, the definitive resource regarding the history and process of cyanotype can be further explored through the work of chemist Mike Ware.