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Image of Gallery in South Kensington

Title page of British and Foreign Flowering Plants and Ferns

Photograph
ca. 1854 (made)
Artist/Maker
Atkins, Anna (photographer)
Place of origin
Great Britain (made)

British Ferns by Anna Atkins; cyanotype;

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read Cameraless photography Cameraless techniques have been exploited and reinterpreted by successive generations of image makers and continue to be used by contemporary artists today. While related to the conventional practices of photography, cameraless images offer an alternative, experimental, radical and often r...

Object details

Categories
Images Online
Photographs
Object type
Photograph
TitleTitle page of <i>British and Foreign Flowering Plants and Ferns</i> (assigned by artist)
Materials and techniques
Cyanotype
Brief description
Title page from 'British and Foreign Flowering Plants and Ferns' by Anna Atkins, cyanotype, Britain, ca. 1854.
Physical description
British Ferns by Anna Atkins; cyanotype;
Dimensions
  • Height: 35cm
  • Width: 25cm
Gallery label
Cameraless Photography

Anna Atkins (1797–1871)
Title page of British and Foreign Flowering Plants and Ferns
c.1854
Cyanotype
35 x 25 cm
Museum no. Ph.379-1981

Anna Atkins is credited with being the first woman photographer and the first person to produce a photographically illustrated book, British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions (1843). Illustrated here is the title page from a later book from which the following pages are also illustrations.
(07 03 2014)
Gallery 100, ‘History of photography’, 2011-2012, label text :

Anna Atkins (1799-1871)
Title page of British and Foreign Flowering
Plants and Ferns
1854

Atkins trained in botanical illustration but later
turned to the ‘beautiful process of Cyanotype’.
A sheet of paper brushed with iron salt solutions was
dried in darkness, and the object to be reproduced
was then placed on it in sunlight. After exposure to
light the paper was washed in water, where oxidation
produced a white image on a cyan background.

Cyanotype
Museum no. Ph.379-1981
Subject depicted
Fern
Bibliographic reference
Val Williams and Susan Bright, How we are: photographing Britain, from the 1840s to the present London: Tate Publishing, 2007. ISBN: 9781854377142.
Collection
Prints, Drawings & Paintings Collection
Accession number
PH.379-1981

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Record createdJanuary 20, 2003
Record URL
https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O73152/title-page-of-ibritish-and-photograph-atkins-anna/
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