Anna Atkins: pioneering botanical photographer who captured algae and ferns in ghostly blue images

Amazing stuff!

"Before the twentieth century, botany was one of the few spaces in which women were free to express their curiosity about the natural world. Anna Atkins (1799–1871) was one of its pioneers. As well as producing studies of algae and ferns, she adopted a new photographic approach to document her finds. In 1843, using the cyanotype technique, which was invented by the astronomer John Herschel the previous year, she published the first book containing photographic illustrations: Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions. ...
Natural history illustrations up to this point were typically hand-drawn, printed as woodcuts or engravings and often hand-coloured. Well-known exponents of this method included German entomologist Maria Sibylla Merian, British American physician Elizabeth Blackwell and English illustrator Sarah Drake. ...
In 1839, she became a member of the Botanical Society of London, one of the few learned societies to admit women at the time. ..."

Anna Atkins: pioneering botanical photographer who captured algae and ferns in ghostly blue images A compilation of 550 original plates reveals the dedicated work of the nineteenth-century woman who was the first to publish a book with cyanotypes of specimens.

Anna Atkins