Editing Cyanotype (section)

== Artists ==

=== Nineteenth century ===
[[File:Edward Linley Sambourne modelling 10 Jan 1895.jpg|thumb|right|Self portrait of Linley Sambourne modelling (10 January 1895) for ''[[Punch (magazine)|Punch]]'' cartoon 'Quite English, You Know!]]
[[File:Photographs of British Algae.jpg|thumb|Anna Atkins, Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions, cyanotype, 1843-53]]

==== Britain ====
Anna Atkins, who was also an accomplished [[watercolor]]ist, in her cyanotype botanical specimens, is considered the first to make art with the medium<ref>{{Cite book|last=Atkins|first=Anna|title=British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions|year=1842|isbn=978-3-95829-510-0|location=Britain}}</ref> in which the sea plants appear suspended in an oceanic blue,<ref>{{Cite book |last=Hornby |first=Louise |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1265455908 |title=Still Modernism: photography, literature, film. |date=2021 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-762604-7 |location=S.l. |pages=147 |language=en|oclc=1265455908}}</ref> and while her hundreds of images satisfy a scientific curiosity, their aesthetic quality has served as inspiration for cyanotype artists ever since.<ref name=":5">{{Cite journal|last=Saska|first=Hope|date=2010|title=Anna Atkins: Photographs of British Algae|journal=Bulletin of the Detroit Institute of Arts|volume=84|issue=1–4|pages=8–15|doi=10.1086/dia23183243|s2cid=165576017|issn=0011-9636}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |date=2016-04-04 |title=FlatFile-DanaMatthews |url=https://davisortongallery.com/flatfile-danamatthews/ |access-date=2022-04-10 |language=en-US}}</ref>

Cyanotype photography was popular in [[Victorian England]], but became less popular as photography improved.<ref>{{cite web |title=Victorian Life – 43 Cyanotypes |url=https://www.vintag.es/2016/12/victorian-life-43-cyanotypes-show.html |access-date=18 August 2019 |website=Vintage Everyday}}</ref> By the mid-1800s few photographers continued to exploit its accessible qualities and at the [[Great Exhibition]] of 1851, despite extensive displays of photographic technology, only a single example of the cyanotype process was included.<ref name=":11">{{Cite book |last=Ware |first=Mike |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/701793636 |title=Cyanotype: the history, science and art of photographic printing in Prussian blue |date=2004 |publisher=Science Museum; National Museum of Photography, Film & Television |isbn=978-1-900747-07-3 |location=London; Bradford (England) |language=en|oclc=701793636}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |url=https://wellcomecollection.org/works/pdp6m5e3/items?canvas=709 |access-date=14 March 2024 |title=Official descriptive and illustrated catalogue of the great exhibition of the works and industry of all nations |volume=1.1 |date=1851 |location=London |publisher=Spicer Brothers, Wholesale Stationers; W. Clowes and Sons, Printers|pages=441–442 |language=en|oclc=312476383}}</ref> [[Peter Henry Emerson]] exemplified the British attitude that cyanotypes were unworthy of purchase or exhibition with his assertion that: "No one but a vandal would print a landscape in red, or in cyanotype."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Crawford|first=William |url=http://worldcat.org/oclc/644240024 |title=The keepers of light: a history & working guide to early photographic processes |date=1979 |publisher=Morgan & Morgan |pages=68 |oclc=644240024}}</ref>

Consequently, the process devolved to the proofing of domestic negatives by hobbyist photographers and to [[postcard]]s, though another British scientist, Fellow of the [[Royal Astronomical Society]]<ref>{{cite web |title=Obituary |url=https://ras.ac.uk/obituaries/Washington/Teasdale |website=Royal Astronomical Society|date=8 August 1830 }}</ref> [[Washington Teasdale]],<ref>{{cite web |title=Washington Teasdale |url=https://www.mhs.ox.ac.uk/collections/imu-search-page/narratives/?irn=14221&index=1 |access-date=18 August 2019 |website=History of Science Museum, Oxford}}</ref>  delivered hundreds of lectures throughout his lifetime and was among the first to illustrate them with [[Magic lantern|lantern slides]], and, up to 1890, to record his experiments and specimens, used the  cyanotype, a collection of which is held at the [[Museum of the History of Science, Oxford]].<ref>{{cite web |title=Washington Teasdale |url=https://www.mhs.ox.ac.uk/collections/imu-search-page/narratives/?irn=14221&index=1 |website=History of Science Museum}}</ref>

[[Edward Linley Sambourne|Edwin Linley Sambourne]] used cyanotypes as an archive of reference images for his ''Punch'' cartoons.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Harding |first=Colin |date=Autumn 2001 |title=Swimming in a cork jacket? Edward Linley Sambourne and photography |journal=The British Art Journal |volume=3 |issue=1 |pages=43–50}}</ref>

==== France ====
Curators and practitioners in France embraced the process. Caricaturist, illustrator, writer and portrait photographer [[Bertall]] (born Charles Albert, vicomte d' Arnoux, comte de Limoges-Saint-Saëns) as partner of [[Hippolyte Bayard]] was commissioned in the 1860s to make cyanotype portraits from glass negatives for the Société d'Ethnographie for their publication ''Collection anthropologique''.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Bayard et Bertall (Paris) |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/981925860 |title=Collection ethnographique photographiée sous les auspices de la Société d'ethnographie et publiée avec le concours d'une commission spéciale |date=1865 |publisher=Bureaux de la Société d'ethnographie, Imprimerie Lemercier |location=Paris |language=fr|oclc=981925860}}</ref> While artistic in execution they also satisfy with the scientific interests of the group as each subject is photographed nude with front, back and profile views, not in the field but in his studio. The project also takes advantage of the ease of making multiples of cyanotypes for the publication<ref>{{Cite book |last=de Labarthe |first=Charles |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/30855082 |title=Annuaire de la Société d'ethnographie, 1862 |date=1862 |publisher=Challamel |location=Paris |language=fr|oclc=30855082}}</ref> [[Henri Le Secq]]'s cyanotypes, which he made after he gave up photography after 1856 to continue painting and collecting art, were reprints of his famous works and made around 1870 as he was afraid of possible loss due to fading. He gave the reprints dates of the original negatives, some of which are still in good condition.<ref name=":11" /> They are well-represented in French collections.<ref name=":7" /> From the early 1850s through the 1870s Corot, with associated artists working in and near the town [[Barbizon]] adopted the hand-drawn ''[[Cliché verre|cliché-verre]]'', and though most were printed on [[Salt print|salted]] or [[Albumen print|albumenized]] paper, some used the cyanotype.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Matthias |first1=Agnes |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/239236369 |title=Zeichnungen des Lichts Clichés-verre von Corot, Daubigny und anderen aus deutschen Sammlungen; [anlässlich der Ausstellung "Zeichnungen des Lichts. Clichés-verre von Corot, Daubigny und Anderen aus Deutschen Sammlungen", Kupferstich-Kabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, 9. Juni bis 3. September 2007] |last2=Mason |first2=Rainer Michael |date=2007 |publisher=Deutscher Kunstverlag |isbn=978-3-422-06723-3 |editor-last=Matthias |editor-first=Kupferstich-Kabinett |language=de|oclc=239236369}}</ref>

==== United States ====
In the US the medium persevered into the 20th century. [[Eadweard Muybridge]] made cyanotype contact prints of his animal locomotion sequences,<ref>{{Cite web |date=2014-11-17 |title=The Cyanotypes |url=https://americanhistory.si.edu/freeze-frame/cyanotypes |access-date=2022-04-10 |website=National Museum of American History |language=en}}</ref> and [[Edward S. Curtis|Edward Curtis]]' ethnographic cyanotypes of native North Americans are preserved in the [[George Eastman Museum|George Eastman House]].

=== Pictorialism ===
[[File:Edward Steichen (American) - (Road into the Valley -- Moonrise) - Google Art Project.jpg|thumb|Edward Steichen (1904) ''Midnight Lake George'' or ''Road into the Valley – Moonrise''.]]
[[File:Bertha Evelyn Jaques, Untitled, c. 1900, NGA 136408.jpg|thumb|Bertha Evelyn Jaques, Untitled, c. 1900, cyanotype, NGA 136408]]
[[Pictorialism|Pictorialists]], throughout Europe and other western countries, in efforts to have photography accepted as an art form, emphasised handcraft in printing, in imitation of painting and drawing, and drew on [[Symbolism (arts)|Symbolist]] subject matter and themes. Many of the practitioners were respected amateurs whose work was rewarded in a system of international 'salons' run by such organisations as the [[The Camera Club of New York|Camera Club of New York]], and competition promoted an elevated level of technical experimentation with all of the then-current processes, such as [[Calotype|calotypy]], cyanotypy, [[gum printing]], [[platinum print]]ing, [[Oil print process|bromoil]] and [[Autochrome Lumière|Autochrome]] colour.<ref name=":9">{{Cite journal |last=Coleman |first=A. D. |date=November 2008 |title=Return of the Suppressed / Pictorialism's Revenge |journal=Border Crossings |volume=27 |issue=4 |pages=72–80 |via=EBSCO}}</ref>

[[Clarence Hudson White|Clarence White]]'s impeccable domestic and plein-air pictures are indebted in their bold composition to his contemporaries the painters [[Thomas Dewing|Thomas Wilmer Dewing]], [[William Merritt Chase]] and [[John White Alexander]]. His labor-intensive process entailed developing the negatives then making tests on cyanotype, playing with dimensions, proportions, and other variables, before making a  print in platinum, which he then meticulously and expressively retouched. [[Alfred Stieglitz|Alfred Steiglitz]] in White's portrait of him (1907) held in Princeton University Art Museum, appears gloweringly critical in the cyanotype print preserved there.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Dalati |first=S. |date=2018 |title=Reconsidering sepia: Clarence White's photography at the Davis |journal=Magazine Antiques |volume=185 |issue=2 |pages=58–59}}</ref>

At the turn of the century, painter-photographer [[Edward Steichen]], then associated with Alfred Steiglitz who promoted the [[Photo-Secession]] and Pictorialism through his ''[[Camera Work]]'' (1903–1917) produced prints of ''Midnight Lake George'' now held in ''The Alfred Stieglitz Collection: Photographs'' at the Art Institute of Chicago where in 2007 scientific examination of the prints and his records concluded that cyanotype had been incorporated in their predominant gum bichromate over platinum production.<ref name=":10">{{Cite journal |last1=O’Connor |first1=Kaslyne |last2=Pate |first2=Ariel |last3=Pénichon |first3=Sylvie |last4=Casadio |first4=Francesca |author-link4=Francesca Casadio |date=2020-04-02 |title=Moonlight or Midnight? Researching the Phases of Edward Steichen's Moonrise Prints |url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01971360.2020.1711689 |journal=Journal of the American Institute for Conservation |volume=59 |issue=2 |pages=111–122 |doi=10.1080/01971360.2020.1711689 |issn=0197-1360 |s2cid=219085989|url-access=subscription }}</ref> Steichen argued provocatively in the first issue of ''Camera Work'' that "every photograph is a fake from start to finish, a purely impersonal, unmanipulated photograph being practically impossible."<ref name=":10" />

Photo-Secessionist Franco-American [[Paul Haviland|Paul Burty-Havilland]], involved through marriage with the Lalique company, evinces a [[Japonisme]] in his moody cyanotype portraits and nudes made between 1898–1920.<ref>{{Cite web |title=La Lanterne japonaise – Paul Haviland  |url=https://www.musee-orsay.fr/fr/oeuvres/la-lanterne-japonaise-53583 |access-date=2022-04-13 |website=www.musee-orsay.fr}}</ref> Another American Pictorialist [[F. Holland Day|Fred Holland Day]] made cyanotypes of youths, nude or in sailor suits, in 1911, that are held in the Library of Congress,<ref>{{Cite web |last=Holland Day |first=Fred |title=Search results from Available Online, Day, F. Holland (Fred Holland), Cyanotypes |url=https://www.loc.gov/search/?fa=contributor:day,+f.+holland+(fred+holland)%7Csubject:cyanotypes |access-date=2022-04-12 |website=Library of Congress}}</ref> and French artist Charles-François Jeandel printed his erotic imagery of bound women in his painting workshop in Paris and then in Charente 1890–1900.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Charles-François Jeandel: Collection des oeuvres  |url=https://www.musee-orsay.fr/fr/collections/recherche?union_artist_names=36959&search_type=advanced_search |access-date=2022-04-13 |website=www.musee-orsay.fr}}</ref>

The more traditional American printmaker [[Bertha Jaques]], aligned with the antimodernist views of the late Victorian [[Arts and Crafts movement]], from 1894 produced more than a thousand cyanotype photographs of wildflowers.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://americanart.si.edu/artist/bertha-e-jaques-2441|title=Bertha E. Jaques|website=Smithsonian American Art Museum|accessdate=25 March 2018}}</ref>

=== Impressionism ===
American artist [[Theodore Robinson]] painted in [[Giverny]] 1887–1892, contemporaneous with [[Claude Monet|Monet]] of whom he made a portrait in cyanotype, and of the haystacks that Monet famously painted. He noted that "Painting directly from nature is difficult as things do not remain the same; the camera helps to retain the picture in your mind."<ref name=":13">{{Cite book |last=Scharf |first=Aaron |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1075334751 |title=Art and Photography |date=1968 |publisher=Allen Lane The Penguin PR. |location=London |language=en |oclc=1075334751}}</ref> He often drew a grid over his cyanotypes or albumen prints to assist transferring the composition, with compositional amendments, onto canvas, though conscious  that "I must beware of the photo, get what I can of it and then go." His photographic imagery is held in the [[Arkell Museum|Canajoharie Library and Art Gallery]] and the Terra Foundation for the Arts.<ref name=":13" /><ref name=":7" />

=== Modernism ===
[[Arthur Wesley Dow]]'s modernist approach was influential on the Pictorialists in the eloquently simple compositions of his [[New England]] environment, like ''Pine Tree'' (1895),<ref>{{Cite book |last=Green |first=Nancy E |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/22530254 |title=Arthur Wesley Dow and his influence |date=1990 |publisher=Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art |location=Ithaca, N.Y. |language=en|oclc=22530254}}</ref> a cyanotype, related to his interest, while studying in France, in the flat, decorative qualities of Japanese art and that of [[Les Nabis]].<ref>{{Cite news |last=Glueck |first=Grace |date=2002-11-15 |title=The Photographs of Arthur Wesley Dow |language=en-US |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/15/arts/art-in-review-the-photographs-of-arthur-wesley-dow.html |access-date=2022-04-11 |issn=0362-4331}}</ref>

In Europe, [[Josef Sudek]], the 'Poet of Prague' sometimes employed the cyanotype to impressionist effect during the early Modernist period.

Milan-born photographer, printmaker, painter, set designer and experimental film-maker, [[Luigi Veronesi]], well-informed about the international debate on abstraction, was impressed with the abstract potential of the photogram. He participated in a 1934 exhibition in Paris with the international group of abstract artists '[[Abstraction-Création]]', through which he met with [[Fernand Léger]]. He drew inspiration from Léger's ''[[Ballet Mécanique]]'', Surrealism via the [[Metaphysical painting]] of [[Giorgio de Chirico|Georgio de Chirico]], and fellow photographer [[Giuseppe Cavalli]] with whom, convinced of the essential 'uselessness' of art, in 1947 he founded a group named ''La Bussola'' (The Compass). Influenced by [[Constructivism (art)|Constructivist]] theories (and politically aligned with Communism), Veronesi used the cyanotype photogram after 1932 as a means of revealing metaphysical qualities in objects.<ref>{{Citation | last1=Sperone |first1=Gian Enzo | last2=Pelizzari | first2=Maria Antonella | title=Painting in Italy, 1910s–1950s: futurism, abstraction, concrete art | publication-date=2016 | page=148 | publisher=Robilant + Voena | url=https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/235380105}}</ref><ref>{{Citation | last1=Miracco |first1=Renato | title=Italian abstraction: 1910–1960 |year=2006 | publication-date=2006 | publisher=Mazzotta | isbn=978-88-202-1811-9 }}</ref>

=== Late modern ===
[[File:"The Blue Room".jpg|thumb|299x299px|[[Catherine Jansen]] (1981) ''The Blue Room,'' cyanotype on fabric, mixed media.]]
In a 2008 essay A.D. Coleman perceived a return of the legacy Pictorialist methods being applied in art photography from 1976,<ref name=":9" /> a tendency represented in [[Francesca Woodman]]'s late cyanotypes and in contact prints by [[Barbara Kasten]] and [[Bea Nettles]].<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Riches |first=Harriet |date=September 2012 |title=Projecting Touch: Francesca Woodman's Late "Blueprints" |url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17540763.2012.701598 |journal=Photographies |volume=5 |issue=2 |pages=135–157 |doi=10.1080/17540763.2012.701598 |s2cid=192002722 |issn=1754-0763|url-access=subscription }}</ref> Weston Naef, curator of photography at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, in a 1998 ''New York Times'' article by critic Lyle Rexer, confirmed that "Looking back at [photography's] pioneers, today's artists see a way to restore expression to an art beguiled by technology," referring to the loss of 'intimacy' in digital imaging to account for artists' attraction to daguerreotypes, tintypes, cyanotypes, stereopticon images, albumen prints, collodion wet plates; all physical and 'hands-on' methods.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Harris |first=Jane |date=February 2001 |title=aura fixation: old technology for new photography |journal=Art on Paper |volume=5 |issue=3 |pages=64–68}}</ref> Artists [[McDermott & McGough|David McDermott and Peter McGough]], who met in the East Village New York art scene of the 1980s, and until 1995 took the phenomenon to the extreme of reconstructing themselves as Victorian gentlemen, adopting the lifestyle and documenting it and their possessions using vintage cameras and materials, first inspired by their discovery of the cyanotype, and dating their contemporary works in the nineteenth century.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Juncosa |first1=Enrique |author2=Irish Museum of Modern Art |url={{GBurl|id=bbslAQAAIAAJ}} |title=McDermott & McGough: an experience of amusing chemistry: photographs 1990-1890. |date=2008 |publisher=Irish Museum of Modern Art; in association with Charta |isbn=978-88-8158-672-1 |location=Dublin; Milano; New York City |oclc=216938953}}</ref>

=== Contemporary ===
[[File:Cyanotype on handmade paper by photographer Kate Cordsen.jpg|thumb|''Indigo XII'', [[Kate Cordsen]]. Cyanotype on handmade paper]]
Since 2000 around 10 books, and in growing numbers, are published each year in English in which 'cyanotype' appears in the title, compared to only 95 in total from 1843 to 1999.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Results for 'cyanotype' > 'Book' [WorldCat.org] |url=https://www.worldcat.org/search?q=cyanotype&fq=dt:bks&dblist=638&fc=yr:_25&qt=show_more_yr:&cookie |access-date=2022-04-11 |website=www.worldcat.org |language=en}}</ref> Though it has been an artform since its inception, the numbers of artists now employing the cyanotype process have burgeoned, and they are not solely photographers. In the book of the 2022 British exhibition ''Squaring the Circles of Confusion: Neo-Pictorialism in the 21st Century'' eight contemporary artists: [[Takashi Arai]], Céline Bodin, [[Susan Derges]], David George, [[Joy Gregory]], [[Tom Hunter (artist)|Tom Hunter]], Ian Phillips-McLaren and Spencer Rowell employ the craft of photography for postmodern purpose, including the cyanotype.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Pritchard |first=Michael |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1295402994 |title=Squaring the circles of confusion. Neo-pictorialism in the 21st century. |date=2020 |publisher=Royal Photographic Society |isbn=978-0-904495-21-8 |location=Bath |language=en |oclc=1295402994}}</ref>

==== International ====
Many were included in the first American international survey of the cyanotype in 2016; the Worcester Art Museum's ''Cyanotypes: Photography's Blue Period''<ref name=":12">{{Cite news|last=Loos|first=Ted|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/06/arts/design/cyanotype-photographys-blue-period-is-making-a-comeback.html|title=Cyanotype, Photography's Blue Period, Is Making a Comeback|date=2016-02-05|work=The New York Times|access-date=2020-02-14|language=en-US|issn=0362-4331}}</ref> which displayed uses of the medium that extend well beyond the utilitarian contact-printing of negatives; Annie Lopez stitched together cyanotypes printed on tamale paper to create dresses; Brooke Williams tea-toned her cyanotypes, adjusting their color to accord with her story as a Jamaican American woman; and Hugh Scott-Douglas experimented with photograms and abstraction.

In 2018, the [[New York Public Library]] exhibited the work of nineteen contemporary artists who employ the medium. Mounted 175 years after Anna Atkin's first book of cyanotypes, ''British Algae'', the exhibition was titled ''Anna Atkins Refracted: Contemporary Works''.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Anna Atkins Refracted: Contemporary Works |url=https://www.nypl.org/events/exhibitions/anna-atkins-refracted-contemporary-works |access-date=2022-04-25 |website=The New York Public Library |language=en}}</ref>

Amongst others currently working in, or with, cyanotype are;

==== United States ====
[[Christian Marclay]] who suggests musical scores in his grids of cassette tapes or their unspooling.

[[Kate Cordsen]] applies Japanese aesthetics and non-Cartesian perspective in her mural-scale cyanotype landscapes.

[[Betty Hahn]] was early to incorporate cyanotype with other art media including hand-painting with [[embroidery]] as a feminist statement<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Markowitz|first=Sally J.|date=1994-01-01|title=The Distinction between Art and Craft|jstor=3333159|journal=Journal of Aesthetic Education|volume=28|issue=1|pages=55–70|doi=10.2307/3333159}}</ref>

[[Meghann Riepenhoff]] reprises Anna Atkins by exposing her prepared papers underneath the waves, so light filters through moving sand, shells, and water currents.<ref name=":12" /><ref>{{cite web|first1=Alex|last1=Merola|access-date=2023-03-14|title=Meghann Riepenhoff's new book collects cyanotypes made by ice - 1854 Photography|url=https://www.1854.photography/2022/12/meghann-riepenhoffs-new-book-collects-cyanotypes-made-by-ice/|website=British Journal of Photography}}</ref>

==== Canada ====
Canadian [[Erin Shirreff]] translates her sculptural interests into large-scale cyanotype photograms of temporary three-dimensional compositions in her studio with hours-long exposures during which component forms are moved, added or subtracted for transparent effect.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Erin Shireff {{!}} Arm's Length |url=https://www.sikkemajenkinsco.com/arms-length |access-date=2022-04-11 |website=Sikkema Jenkins & Co. |language=en-US}}</ref>

==== Germany ====
German artist [[Marco Breuer]] abrades cyanotype prints on watercolour paper in representations of the passing of time.

==== Iceland ====
Icelandic artist and filmmaker [[Inga Lísa Middleton]] employs the cyanotype for nostalgic representations of her homeland, and as a symbolic colour in imagery alerting audiences to an emerging catastrophe in the marine environment.

==== United Kingdom ====
British-born American resident [[Walead Beshty]]'<nowiki/>s Barbican Art Gallery installation of 12,000 cyanotype prints traces a visual time line from October 2013 to September 2014 in a work called ''A Partial Disassembling of an Invention Without a Future: Helter-Skelter and Random Notes in Which the Pulleys and Cogwheels Are Lying Around at Random All Over the Workbench,'' produced from each object from the artists' studio being exposed on cyanotype-coated found paper, card or wood.

In April 2023 [https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1BApwBzH5H/ Maria Livesey] a Scottish-born designer-maker started experimenting with Cyanotype on muslin and silk, as part of her mark and image making exploration on textiles for [[Nuno felting|Nuno]] Felting