Cyanotype research:
Cyanotype photography is a camera-less technique that involves laying an object on paper coated with a solution of iron salts before exposing it to UV light and washing with water to create white and blue images.
There are many artists that work with cyanotype printing as well as the use of modern day cameras to create their artwork. There are two practitioners that I am particularly interested in, Joy Gregory and Anna Atkins.
For this project I had the idea of using acetate to invert images I have taken and use them as negatives against the cyanotype solution. When the solution develops the images will have left their 'shadow' behind on the paper. I am unsure on the outcome of initial idea but I would like to experiment with it and see how successful it will be.
Joy Gregory:
Joy Gregory is a British artist who uses cyanotype to express deeper meanings behind her work such as concerns related to race, gender and cultural differences. I was interested in her project 'Girl thing' as she used objects linked to women as her cyanotypes. The use of dolls to create a form of shadow particularly interested me as I wanted to use images of peole against cyanotypes to create a shadow apperance.
Anna Atkins:
Anna Atkins was a Victorian botanist and a photographer and is considered to be the first person to illustrate a book created with photographic images she took of alage using cyanotypes. Before her book, botanical images would have been restricted to engravings on wood or using the early stages of printing.
Women were restricted from professionally practicing science for most of the nineteenth century. Working by her father's side Anna became an accomplished illustrator. Her cyanotype impressions provide enough to distinguish one species from the next which helped within the botanical world.
Mandy Barker
“In 2012, I found a piece of material in a rock pool that changed my life. Mistaking this moving piece of cloth for seaweed, started the recovery of synthetic clothing from around the coastline of Britain for the next ten years”.
Two hundred and two ‘specimens’ of clothing and garments recovered from one hundred and twenty-one beaches mimic different species of marine algae, with the intention of raising awareness about the over consumption of synthetic plastic clothing [fast fashion], which is currently having the greatest impact on global climate change. After seeing an original copy of the book, ‘Photographs of British Algae, Volume 1’ by Anna Atkins, Barker was captivated by its detail and significance, and for the way it changed how we looked at science in 1800’s, but more importantly for the possibility to re-create similar work that could engage how we look at science in connection with a present-day critical issue.
In this new presentation titled ‘Cyanotype Imperfections’ instead of the Atkins ‘Cyanotype Impressions’, the book includes 202 cyanotype image pages and 8 cyanotype text pages using original 1800’s J Whatman paper that Atkins used from the original Turkey Mill in Kent.
