Cyanotype

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Nowadays, cyanotype, meaning dark-blue impression in Ancient Greek, is a type of alternative photography used by artists and high school photography classes, but almost two centuries ago, cyanotype was one of the first forms of photography, and the man who discovered the process was the one to coin the word “photography” in 1839.

Sir John Herschel was a British astronomer from a family of astronomers including his aunt, Caroline Herschel, the first female scientist to receive a salary. At the start of his career, he built a reflecting telescope, co-founded the Royal Astronomical Society, and was knighted. Later on he inspired Charles Darwin, theorized on how vision could be improved, and voyaged to South Africa to catalogue the sky, only to find happiness with his wife creating botanical illustrations. While away, Herschel’s name appeared in a series of newspaper articles detailing fascinating and strange life on the moon. Apparently bat humans, unicorns, and bison thrived on the moon’s lush landscape full of craters and crystals. This  scheme to sell more papers, became known as the Great Moon Hoax. Hershel had no part to play.

In an attempt to find a method to copy his notes, Herschel experimented with the effect of light on iron salts. Once exposed to sunlight, the chemical solution yields Prussian blue (also known as Berlin Blue), a rich blue that was first synthesized by a German paint maker at the beginning of the 18th century. Herschel published his findings in 1842 and along with coining “photography,” he was the first to use “positive,” “negative,” and “snapshot,” in relation to photography.  

Within a year, Anna Atkins, a friend of the Herschel family, began utilizing cyanotype to get clear images of algae. Following in her father’s footsteps, Atkins had received exemplarity scientific education for a woman during the early 19th century, and she had begun her career engraving shells. In 1843, Atkins self-published the first book illustrated with photographic images of the “flowers of the sea.”

During the Victorian Era, cyanotype was incredibly popular and also necessary for the copying of architectural prints, aptly named blueprints. The regard for cyanotype naturally waned at the turn of the century as other photographic processes improved. In the modern era, many have dismissed cyanotype, claiming the bizarre blue prints don’t count as photographs since they are so easy, similarly to how polaroids were discounted  as a fine art form during the 1970s. Anyone, in almost any space, can create cyanotypes, making it an accessible and still very striking photographic process.