Blue Light: Anna Atkins and the First Photobook

Every Atkins plate in the gallery began the same way: a specimen laid on paper brushed with iron salts, set out in sunlight, and rinsed until the ground turned that unmistakable Prussian blue.

The first photobook

Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions preceded Talbot's Pencil of Nature to press. Atkins made every plate by hand: image, caption, and all: over ten years of patient work.

• Each plate is a photogram: no camera, no negative, only contact and light
• The captions are photograms too, written on strips laid onto the paper
• No two impressions of a plate are identical

Why they still stop people

Collectors buy from images more than they admit. The cyanotypes need no argument: the blue does the talking.