Anna Atkins

Between October 1843 and 1853, Anna Atkins self-published Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions — the first book ever illustrated with photographs, predating Henry Fox Talbot's Pencil of Nature by eight months. She produced nearly 400 cyanotype plates of British marine algae and ferns (389 in the Royal Society reference copy; copies range from 382 to 443 plates), using the contact-print technique pioneered by Herschel: each specimen pressed directly onto sensitised paper, then exposed to sunlight. Elected a member of the Botanical Society of London in 1839 — one of the few British learned societies to admit women — Atkins occupies a singular place in the history of science: a pioneer of scientific illustration by photography at a time when women's access to laboratories and learned societies remained exceptional. From 1853 onwards, she collaborated with her cousin Anne Dixon on Cyanotypes of British and Foreign Ferns, extending her method from the marine to the terrestrial realm. The original plates are held at the New York Public Library, the Victoria & Albert Museum, the British Library, the Getty Museum and the Royal Society. Atkins fell into the public domain in France in 1942, 70 years after her death (CPI L.123-1). At Maison Picturale, her botanical compositions can be reinterpreted in contemporary cyanotype tirages on cotton paper 640 gsm, signed by our master printers — a tribute to the founding mother of photographic book art.