These are by Anna Atkins, arguably the first female photographer! The cyanotype process was discovered by Sir John Herschel in 1842, and she quickly used it for photography of plants.
What sort of diary should I like mine to be? Something loose-knit and yet not slovenly, so elastic that it will embrace anything, solemn, slight or beautiful, that comes into my mind. I should like it to resemble some deep old desk or capacious hold-all, in which one flings a mass of odds and ends without looking them through. I should like to come back, after a year or two, and find that the collection had sorted itself and refined itself and coalesced, as such deposits so mysteriously do, into a mould, transparent enough to reflect the light of our life, and yet steady, tranquil compounds with the aloofness of a work of art. The main requisite, I think, on reading my old volumes, is not to play the part of a censor, but to write as the mood comes or of anything whatever; since I was curious to find how I went for things put in haphazard, and found the significance to lie where I never saw it at the time.
These are by Anna Atkins, arguably the first female photographer! The cyanotype process was discovered by Sir John Herschel in 1842, and she quickly used it for photography of plants.
ReplyDeleteAha! Thank you for this Margaret! Ill update the post and i can do some proper research now, i couldnt find a proper referance.
Delete