A Secret Treasure: Anna Atkins’s Cyanotype Impressions of British Algae

The Linnean Society library is a priceless repository of botanical information and illustration dating back to its formation in 1788. Among its hidden treasures are three unassuming grey archival boxes containing rebound books of cyanotype images created by photographic pioneer Anna Atkins (1799-1871). Their value to the history of botanical illustration is incalculable, their uniqueness confirmed in each ground breaking image of British algae. Linnean Society librarian Will Beharrell arranged a viewing of this particularly fascinating set of 1843-1853 images by Atkins containing 450 pages of hand written text and innovative photographic images. These volumes are testament to Atkins’s self-publication - the first book to be illustrated by photographs which places her firmly into the multiple histories of photography, botany and publishing.

Viewing any version of Atkins’s Photographs of British Algae, Cyanotype Impressions is a mixture of anticipation and familiarity - each collection is 'functionally identical' but can differ slightly or significantly in content and arrangement. It was, therefore, a genuine surprise to encounter three seemingly familiar volumes containing cyanotype photographic impressions by Atkins but displaying substantial differences compared to any previously viewed in person or in digitised form online. These differences were reflected in image layout, order, labelling or sometimes an occasional omission. But all images are depicted with their faithful binomial Linnaean identification.

Occasionally two holdings present a mirror image representation of significant specimens when comparing one with another. The difficulty involved in Atkins’s photographic repetition can be seen in specific images where the specimen has been laterally inverted during transfer from one cyanotype sheet to another, but the identification label remains in the same approximate position. The Linnean Society image of Halyseris polypodioides mirrors the equivalent page from the corresponding Natural History Museum volume, but without a corresponding reductive trim.

The image of Halyseris polypodioides from Volume I shows a vertical fold when revealing its full image, one of several Linnean Society volume pages folded rather than trimmed, a very unusual feature. Images were folded horizontally such as Cystosiera ericoides or vertically along its outside edge as seen here with Ptilota plumosa.

Another page was folded along both edges concealing a substantial part of the image until folded out and fully revealed.

Folding the page created an additional post-photographic permanent impression of its own, inevitably interrupting the overall clarity of the original image. It appears that the bookbinder was reluctant to trim the larger images, perhaps having read the chapter on trimming in Joseph William Zaehnsdorf’s 1880 The Art of Bookbinding containing a plea ‘never to take from it a hair’s breadth more than is absolutely needful’. Whatever the motivation, these Atkins volume pages have become distinctive due to their untrimmed preservation, indelibly marking the passage of time within each vertical or horizontal crease.

Most specimens were labelled horizontally, but occasionally vertically to maximise available space such as Chordaria flagelliformis.

Larger images such as Ulva latissima could not be reduced when initially photographed due to their contact compression between cyanotype paper and glass rather than using a camera. Maintaining her botanical roots, a herbarium style method of visual conservation produced the definitive appearance of this distinctive form of illustration, an exact photographic ‘impression’ represented as a white negative on Prussian blue background, faithful in size, detailed complexity and translucence.

One of the most unusual features in the Linnean Society collection is found in Volume I, page 11 and 12. Atkins presented her photographs printed only on one side, then bound the image to appear as the right hand page with its unexposed verso forming the subsequent left page overleaf. In Part 1 of Volume I, however, pages 11 and 12 have been bound with images facing each other.

Atkins provided the cyanotypes in twelve parts followed by three volumes of extensive British algae images. Unfortunately for the bookbinder, she also supplied a later comprehensive expanded contents list aligned with the corresponding text in William Henry Harvey’s A Manual of the British Algae. All photographs were to be re-incorporated into three volumes but the instruction appears to have caused some confusion. Fig.10. shows specimens contained within Part XII also listed at the beginning of the subsequent Volume 1. It is rare to see a full collection of part lists in addition to the comprehensive contents page which was placed at the end rather than the beginning of each volume, acting as an index rather than a reference guide to forthcoming images.

Photographs of British Algae, Cyanotype Impressions at the Linnean Society presents the viewer with a distinctive variation in the evolution of a unique botanical project created in photography’s formative early years. The provenance and construction of these specific volumes pose more questions than answers, adding to the enigmatic photographic legacy of Anna Atkins. These precious volumes distil ten years of dedicated work by a botanist / photographer into a remarkable cyanotype journey through a marine environment captured by an alchemical mix of photo sensitive paper, algae and illuminated by mid nineteenth-century sunlight.