Anna Atkins (March 16, 1799 – June 16, 1871) is considered the first woman to make a photograph. She first trained as a British botanist and discovered photography as a way to record botanical details for a scientific textbook "Algae of Britain - Cyanotype Impressions".
The book is now considered the first book that presented light-sensitive materials in print. In light of the success, Atkins decided to use the cyanotype method even more in the means of printing the text she had written by hand and to add illustrations through the photographic process instead of using the traditional letterpress printing.
In 1843, Atkins printed and published the first part of the "Algae of Britain" which established photography as a means of producing accurate scientific illustrations.
Anna Atkins was born in Tunbridge, Kent, England, in 1799. Her mother died when Anna was a baby, which made her close to her beloved John George Children, who was a distinguished scientist and fellow and even secretary of the Royal Society. After her marriage to John Pelly Atkins in 1825, she became interested in botany among other things by collecting dried plants, which she later photographed.
Atkins' father and husband were friends of William Fox Talbo and in 1841, on Talbo's advice, she decided to move into the field of photography. She learned directly from Talbo two of his inventions related to photography: the "photogenic illustration" technique (where the object is placed on light-sensitive paper that is exposed to the sun and creates an image) as well as caliotype.
In 1843 she specialized in the cyanotype method developed by Sir John Herschel, although it is possible that Herschel himself was the one who trained her since the two families lived 50 km apart in Kent, and her botanist father John George Children and Herschel were friends
From 1843 to 1853 she worked non-stop to document the large collection of seaweed which she published in a 12-part series. In 1853, Anna Atkins joined her childhood friend Anne Dixon, and the two collaborated in creating photographs of ferns, flowers, feathers and lace. These photographs became a kind of work of art even though this was not her original intention. Many of the plant photograms were noted for being a significant scientific document but also for their afterthought placement.
More on women in science on the science website:
- Maria Gaetana Agnesi - studied mathematics as a hobby and wrote the first textbook in Khado'a
- Sophie Germain - the mathematician who refused to accept a pure gold statue as a prize
- Dorothy Croft Hodgkin, pioneer of X-ray crystallography
- Did Einstein's first wife secretly compose the theory of relativity with him in 1905?
5 תגובות
Eli, it's okay, she doesn't read in any language now.
Say Shiran, are you serious? Did you read the article at all? She's British! Why do you think she reads Hebrew?
Anna Atkins congratulations you are already 216 years old I love you and wish you health happiness and wealth more photos and I read what you wrote there and I really enjoyed hearing that there is someone who writes about her even I don't know her who is involved in photographing paintings sculptures and art so congratulations I love Shiran Tzedek
Very nice. I liked it 🙂
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