Names: | | Dates: | 1799, 16 March - 1871 | Born: | Great Britain, England, Kent, Tonbridge | Active: | UK | In 1841 an Irish botanist William Henry Harvey (1811-1866) published A Manual of the British Algae (London: John Van Voorst) which lacked any illustrations. Anna Atkins knew of the cyanotype process through her family acquaintance Sir John Herschel and she recognised that it could provide illustrations of the specimens. She employed the cyanotype process for the first book in the world illustrated entirely with photographs - British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions (1843 onwards).
Collaborating with Anne Dixon a further, and rarer, publication was privately published Cyanotypes of British and Foreign Flowering Plants and Ferns. As each cyanotype was created by hand the quality of the prints varied and at times improved versions were supplied to replace earlier ones. This means that the numbers of plates in the different copies varies considerably.Preparing biographies Anna Atkins produced the first photographically illustrated book and is recognised as the first female photographer, with her three-volume British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions appearing in instalments from 1843. Atkins used the Cyanotype process which had been invented in 1842 by Fox Talbot’s associate Sir John Herschel. This biography is courtesy and copyright of the Victoria & Albert Museum and is included here with permission. Date last updated: 11 Nov 2011.
SHARED BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION PROJECT We welcome institutions and scholars willing to test the sharing of biographies for the benefit of the photo-history community. The biography above is a part of this trial. If you find any errors please email us details so they can be corrected as soon as possible. |
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Talbot immediately saw the intimate connection between photography and the printed page; his 1844 publication of The Pencil of Nature was a vivid demonstration. Nearly a year before this, however, Anna Atkins had begun publishing the first book illustrated with actual photographs, British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions, which would be issued in parts over a span of ten years. Its thousands of plates were actual blueprint photograms; each was an original cyanotype negative, printed directly from dried seaweed at her home of Sevenoaks, near London. An illustrator and serious amateur botanist, Atkins was a friend of Sir John Herschel and his family. Her father, John George Children, chaired the Royal Society meeting at which Talbot first disclosed the working details of photogenic drawing. Atkins and her father received a tutorial and examples of calotypes directly from Talbot. None of Atkins’s calotypes are known to have survived, but thousands of her original cyanotype photograms are still in fine condition, most in copies of British Algae; more diverse subject matter is preserved in albums. A few of these are still intact, but others have more recently been broken up. Roger Taylor & Larry J. Schaaf Impressed by Light: British Photographs from Paper Negatives, 1840-1860 (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2007) This biography is courtesy and copyright of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and is included here with permission. Date last updated: 4 Nov 2012.
SHARED BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION PROJECT We welcome institutions and scholars willing to test the sharing of biographies for the benefit of the photo-history community. The biography above is a part of this trial. If you find any errors please email us details so they can be corrected as soon as possible. |
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Family history If you are related to this photographer and interested in tracking down your extended family we can place a note here for you to help. It is free and you would be amazed who gets in touch. alan@luminous-lint.com |
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