image id: 419710
Anna Atkins (1799–1871)
Laminaria digitata, from: Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype
Impressions. Part 2
[Halstead Place, Sevenoaks, England: Anna Atkins, 1843–53]
NYPL, Spencer Collection
Anna Atkins, an amateur marine botanist, was responsible for every aspect
of her masterpiece, Photographs of British Algae: she collected hundreds of
specimens of seaweed and identified, labeled, and made photograms of them,
employing the cyanotype process now used only for blueprints. (This involved
placing the specimens on chemically treated paper and exposing them briefly
to the sun.) Then she put them into a series of volumes whose images hover
between science and art. She made fewer than twenty copies of the whole, and
gave them to scientific institutions, friends, and relations. Since she came
from a prominent scientific family, this included people like the astronomer
Sir John Herschel. Herschel developed the cyanotype process and communicated
it to Atkins via her father; she presented this copy to him.
Other cyanotypes from Photographs of British Algae have been digitized and
may be viewed on NYPL’s Digital Gallery.
