ABOUT ANNA
Trained as a botanist, Anna Atkins developed an interest in photography as a means of recording botanical specimens for a scientific reference book, British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions. This publication was one of the first uses of light-sensitive materials to illustrate a book. Instead of traditional letterpress printing, the book's handwritten text and illustrations were created by the cyanotype method. Atkins printed and published Part I of British Algae in 1843 and in doing so established photography as an accurate medium for scientific illustration.
Atkins learned directly about the invention of photography through her correspondence with its inventor, William Henry Fox Talbot. Although she owned a camera, she used only the cameraless photogenic drawing technique to produce all of her botanical images. With the assistance of Anne Dixon, Atkins created albums of cyanotype photogenic drawings of her botanical specimens. She learned the cyanotype printing method through its inventor, the astronomer and scientist Sir John Herschel, a family friend.
QUOTE by ANNA ATKINS
“The difficulty of making accurate drawings of objects so minute as many of the Algae and Confervae 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.” (1843, text accompanying the first photographically illustrated book, British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions, authored by the Atkins, recognized as the first female photographer.)
DEFINITION OF CONFERVAE: 1 capitalized, in some especially former classifications : a genus of filamentous green algae containing a number of species of doubtful relationship many of which are now usually placed in the genus Tribonema.
WHAT I WISH FOR YOU TODAY
RISK. SEEK. ATTEMPT. DISCOVER. STRIVE. UNDERTAKE. DO. CREATE. CREATE MORE. JUST CREATE.