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Anna Atkins (British, 1799-1871), Ceylon, 1852-1854. Cyanotype. New Orleans Museum of Art, Museum purchase, General Acquisitions Fund.
This unique camera-less photograph was part of an extensive project to document plants from Great Britain and British colonies like Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), and illustrates an early example of how important photography would become in our attempts to learn about and protect the natural world. Anna Atkins (British, 1799-1871) was a trained botanist who adopted photographic processes in order to describe, analyze, and, in a manner of speaking, preserve plant specimens from around the world. She is widely considered the first person to use photographs to illustrate a book, her British
Algae: Cyanotype Impressions published in 1843. Atkins made her photographs by placing plants directly on chemically treated paper and exposing the combination to sunlight, creating a negative image of this fern. With these and other projects, Atkins helped establish photography as an important tool in scientific and ecological observation.
