Anna Atkins

Anna Atkins (1799–1871) was an English botanist and photographer who pioneered illustrated books made with photographic images, especially cyanotype studies of algae.

Photographs of British Algae: Anna Atkins’s multipart cyanotype book documenting British algae, issued in parts from 1843. This landmark publication paired algae specimens with their direct photographic silhouettes.
Photogram: A photographic image made by placing objects directly on light-sensitive material and exposing it to light. Atkins made plant images by arranging specimens directly on coated paper.
Botany: The scientific study of plants, including their structure, classification, evolution, and ecology. Atkins approached photography as a tool for recording botanical forms.
Photographic book: A book in which photographs form a central part of its visual or informational content. Atkins helped establish photography as a means of illustrating an entire book.
Cyanotypes of British and Foreign Ferns: An 1853 book by Anna Atkins and Anne Dixon, illustrated with cyanotype images of ferns. It extends Atkins’s specimen-based photographic publishing from algae to ferns.
Sir John Herschel: An English astronomer and chemist who discovered the cyanotype process in 1842. Herschel’s process made Atkins’s blue photographic prints possible.
William Henry Fox Talbot: An English scientist and inventor who developed the calotype photographic process and published early photographic books. Talbot’s experiments and publications formed part of the photographic world Atkins entered.
Scientific illustration: Visual representation used to communicate scientific subjects and observations. Her prints offered a photographic alternative to drawn botanical illustrations.
British and Foreign Flowering Plants and Ferns: A three-volume work by Anna Atkins and Anne Dixon, illustrated with cyanotypes and published in the 1850s. Its plant portraits reveal the range of Atkins’s later collaborative work.
Prussian blue: A deep-blue iron-based pigment formed through reactions between iron compounds. This pigment is the blue product that gives cyanotypes their color.

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Louis Désiré Blanquart-EvrardRelated: Her photographic books show the contemporary drive to reproduce images for publication.