Adventures with Prussian Blue.
The Cyanotype Process.
I absolutely love Cyanotype, one of the earliest processes in photography, it can be a simple artistic adventure for young children yet a sophisticated process when printed over platinum/palladium chemistry. The world’s favourite colour, blue has come to symbolise calmness, tranquillity and focus, thought to foster a more conducive environment for creative thinking. Using these processes I feel a greater connection to my work and to nature.
Cyanotype - a photographic printing process that produces blue prints using chemistry, paper and light, the process was discovered by Sir John Herschel in 1842, he used the process to reproduce mathematical tables, architects and engineers used the process to make blueprints of their drawings. Herschel’s friend, Anna Atkins, a photographer, explored the process for book illustration by making cyanotypes of plants. The process was used in her first book, Cyanotypes of British and Foreign Flowering Plants and Ferns.
I've developed my own practice over the last twenty five years in my darkroom, my autograph if you will - the choice of camera, film, chemistry and toners. Deliberately slow, some say meditative, my practice is time consuming. More of my process below….
Given my fascination of Cyanotype printing, I felt I would like to share a favourite book on the subject - Sun Gardens: The Cyaotypes of Anna Atkins by Larry J Schaaf.
I always feel privileged to have attended a lecture by Larry Schaaf during my MA studies.
A LITTLE HISTORY
Anna Atkins 1799-1871 , grew up in an environment of learning and scientific discovery as her father, a prominent scientist. Inspired by William Henry Fox Talbot to take up photography she was friends with Sir John Herschel, who invented the cyanotype photographic process in 1842. The following year she began making cyanotypes hoping to illustrate and distribute information about her herbarium.
Supplementary texts shed new light on her productions and on the cyanotype process, which is still used today.
The result was Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions. It was the very first book to be illustrated with photographs. Some ten years later, she and her friend Anne Dixon expanded their visual inquiry to flowering plants, feathers, and other subjects. This book is a revised and expanded edition of a long out-of-print monograph that first secured Atkins's place in the history of photography. It makes use of her years of careful research and sets hers and her work in the proper context.
Hake brush with dish of mixed chemicals.
MY OWN PROCESS
Each of my cyanotype prints are made by hand coating a carefully chosen cotton rag paper with light sensitive chemistry. This is done by measuring and mixing two lots of dry chemical crystals in water. They aren’t light sensitive on their own but when combined together they become sensitive to light. This is done therefore dim lighting, well away from natural daylight. I do this part in my darkroom with my red light on. I coat the paper with the chemistry using a hake brush. This has no metal as this would cause a reaction.. I then let it dry overnight. I expose the coated paper to UV light, under a large negative with a piece of glass on top for even cotact. Once exposed, the paper is then thoroughly washed and dried. The rich Prussian blue colours that Cyanotype is known for will appear overnight as the chemicals oxydise.
Each print is slightly different due to the brushstrokes and other elements. If exposed outside, Cyanotype prints can be quite different, depending on the strength of the sun, weather conditions and time of year.
I make the negatives for Cyanotype prints by scanning my negatives or sometimes I will use digital files. They are inverted, tweaked as needed for the paper used and then printed out on a special semi opaque film to the size of the finished print as Cyanotype is a contact process.