Cystoseira granulata

British naturalist, botanical illustrator, and photographer Anna Atkins created the world’s first known photography book, a cyanotype collection of British algae. In the cyanotype process, objects are placed on photosensitive paper, then the paper is exposed to sunlight. The UV rays cause a color-changing chemical reaction on the paper around the object, while the area under the object remains white. This creates a ghostly negative of the object, as in this cyanotype of the algae Cystoseira granulata. With the advent of photography in the mid-1800s, scientists and artists could allow light to directly “write” on paper, without the intervention of the human hand. Scholar Sophia Franchi argues that we can understand Atkins’ work, and the process of cyanotype more broadly, within the tradition of Victorian women’s handicrafts. By recasting botanical and photographic processes as “craft,” we challenge the gendered hierarchies of Western knowledge that equate scientific objectivity with masculinity.

Photogram