{"id":83694,"date":"2015-03-16T14:26:36","date_gmt":"2015-03-16T18:26:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=83694"},"modified":"2015-03-16T14:26:36","modified_gmt":"2015-03-16T18:26:36","slug":"impressions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/03\/16\/impressions\/","title":{"rendered":"Impressions"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"atkins1\"<\/a>

From Photographs of British Algae
<\/i><\/p><\/div>\n

Some claim that Anna Atkins\u2014born on this day in 1799, in Kent\u2014was the first woman to take a photograph. Others that hers were the first photos ever printed in book form.<\/p>\n

Atkins was a botanist, an artist, and an accomplished nature photographer. Her father was a scientist, and he encouraged his daughter\u2019s early interest in botany. Both her father and her eventual husband,\u00a0John Pelly Atkins, were friendly with the pioneering photographer and inventor\u00a0William Henry Fox Talbot; it was probably Talbot who introduced her to the techniques she would come to use in her art.<\/p>\n

In her books on British algae and her later work on plants and ferns, Atkins worked by contact-printing cyanotype\u00a0photograms, and by \u201cphotogenic drawing,\u201d the process by which light-sensitive paper is exposed to the sun. <\/p>\n

Whether or not she was the first woman to take a photograph\u2014some claim it was Talbot\u2019s wife, Constance\u2014her self-published 1844 book\u00a0Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>predates her mentor\u2019s\u00a0The Pencil of Nature\u00a0<\/em>(acknowledged to be the first commercially printed book illustrated with photos) by some months.\u00a0Only seventeen copies of\u00a0British Algae\u00a0<\/em>are known today, but luckily several are in excellent condition. The book is clearly a scientist\u2019s tool\u2014which is to say, not exactly light reading for the casual algae enthusiast\u2014but it shows clearly Atkins\u2019s seriousness as a scientist and the precision of her technique. That the images possess a ghostly beauty was presumably besides the point. By the time she died, at seventy-two (of \u201cparalysis, rheumatism, and exhaustion\u201d), Atkins had gained the respect of the scientific community. Her works were donated en masse to the British Museum.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If none of that leaves you sufficiently impressed, check out today\u2019s Google Doodle<\/a>\u2014in honor of Atkins\u2019s 216th birthday.<\/p>\n

\"atkins2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"atkins3\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"atkins4\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Sadie Stein is contributing editor of <\/em>The Paris Review, and the <\/em>Daily\u2019s correspondent.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some claim that Anna Atkins\u2014born on this day in 1799, in Kent\u2014was the first woman to take a photograph. Others that hers were the first photos ever printed in book form. Atkins was a botanist, an artist, and an accomplished nature photographer. Her father was a scientist, and he encouraged his daughter\u2019s early interest in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":178,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13115],"tags":[17422,35,17423,4846,17425,88,6696,1045,17427,17426,12149,12985,100,14684,7355,17424],"class_list":["post-83694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-our-daily-correspondent","tag-anna-atkins","tag-art","tag-botany","tag-britain","tag-cyanotype-photograms","tag-england","tag-ghosts","tag-google","tag-google-doodle","tag-john-pelly-atkins","tag-leaves","tag-nineteenth-century","tag-photography","tag-plants","tag-science","tag-william-henry-fox-talbot"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nGhostly Beauty: Anna Atkins, the First Woman to Take a Photo<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Atkins, an artist and botanist, is believed to have been the first woman ever to take a photograph. 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