The first female photographer was also a botanist. The first female photographer was a cyano_photographer!
Anna Children, who later became Atkins (her husband’s last name), was the daughter of the chemist, mineralogist and zoologist John George Children. Anna was orphaned by her mother at an early age and thus developed a strong bond with her father. A perceptive man, who offered her a completely unusual for the time scientific education with an emphasis on her interest in botany.
Anne's husband, John Pelly Atkins had developed a special circle of friends that included the photographic inventor William Fox Talbot and the inveterate experimenter Sir John Frederick William Herschel. Moreover, Herschel was also the one who baptized the newborn magical art "PHOTOGRAPHY", resorting, like other great men of the time, to the elegant verbal precision and synthetic nature of the Greek language: PHOS (light) & GRAPHI (writing).
In 1842 Herschel discovers Cyanotyping and once again becomes the philhellenic godfather of the technique (ΚΥΑΝΟ | CYANO). The Berliner Diesbach had of course preceded him, having observed the blue compound of iron under the influence of ultraviolet radiation. Ferrocyanide iron, reacting to ultraviolet light, "hardens", acquiring this special blue color. And so, in 1706, the painting Prussian Blue was born.
In the photographic environment, after impregnating the paper with iron salts, contact printing was done and then washing with water. The “magic trick” was that the image appeared white on a deep blue background. The photosensitivity of the chemicals allowed exposure, albeit of long duration, to the sun, without the need for a darkroom.
Its inventor, Herschel, had discovered in this way (after all, this was his research motivation in this case) an easy, alternative way of copying his notes.
Sir John Herschel. “The Honourable Mrs. Leicester Stanhope,” 1836.
Κυανοτυπία(source: https://sites.utexas.edu/ransomcentermagazine/2010/12/07/from-blue-skies-to-blue-print-astronomer-john-herschels-invention-of-the-cyanotype/)
Anna is taught the new technique by Herschel and decides to use it as scientific photo evidence for her botanical record creating a photo album. The album was called "British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions", a multi-volume and, as it proved, valuable, work that Anna enriched over the years, applying the pioneering photographic reproduction of cyanotype and accompanying her cyanotype illustrations with handwritten annotations.
This is the first photographic book by a woman.
Cyanotype of British algae της Anna Atkins
(source: https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/anna-atkins-cyanotypes-the-first-book-of-photographs.html)
Cyanotype of British algae της Anna Atkins
(source: The New York Public Library )
Cyanotype of British algae της Anna Atkins
(source: The New York Public Library,)
To be continued