Happy birthday to botanist & photography trailblazer Anna Atkins (1799-1871), née Children!

[minouette@spore.social]

Happy birthday to botanist & photography trailblazer Anna Atkins (1799-1871), née Children!

Atkins’ mother died when she was still an infant, but she was close with her naturalist father & received a much more scientific education than was common for women in her time. Her 250 detailed engravings of shells were used to illustrate her father’s translation of Lamarck’s ‘Genera of Shells’; 🧵

#sciart #printmaking #linocut #womenInSTEM #histsci #womensHistoryMonth

https://minouette.etsy.com/listing/1266367063

[minouette@spore.social]

her illustration allowed readers to properly identify Lamarck’s genera. She married John Pelly Atkins in 1825 & devoted herself to botany & collecting specimen, including for Kew Gardens. In 1839, she became a member of the Botanical Society of the British Isles, one of the few scientific organizations open to women. She became interested in algae, after William Henry Harvey published ‘A Manual of the British marine Algae in 1841’.

Through her father, she was friends with 🧵2/

[minouette@spore.social]

both William Henry Fox Talbot, who invented the salted paper & calotype processes, precursors to modern photographic methods, & Sir John Herschel, who (amongst other things) invented the #cyanotype photographic process in 1842. Within a single year of its invention, she self-published the first known book of illustrated with cyanotype photographs & was likely one of the 2 first women to make a photograph. She recorded her seaweed specimen for posterity by 🧵3/

[minouette@spore.social]

making photograms by placing the unmounted dried-algae original directly on the cyanotype paper. Atkins self-published her photograms in the first installment of Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions in October 1843, & 2 further volumes in the next decade. She collaborated with Anne Dixon (1799–1864) to produce further books of cyanotypes on ferns & flowering plants & also published other non-scientific or photographic books. 🧵4/5

[minouette@spore.social]

In 1865, she donated her collections to the British Museum.

I’ve shown her based on an early photographic portrait, along with some cyanotype fern leaves, much how she illustrated her own specimen.

🧵5/5

[colorblindcowboy@mastodon.art]

@minouette Anna Atkins is awesome. I believe she is also the first person to self publish a photography book.

[minouette@spore.social]

@colorblindcowboy yes indeed!