This site requires Javascript to be turned on. Please enable Javascript and reload the page.

AH 331 History of Photography Spring 2021 Compendium

Print 2 Final - Catherine Dao, "Essentially Eternal," 2021.

This page is referenced by:

La Vie en Bleu: Life Captured with Cyanotype
The cyanotype, also known as the sun print and descriptively as the solandi print, after the sun ‘sol’ and ‘I’, is one of the earliest forms of photography that is still practiced today. It is the form of photography that is based on a natural, abundant element whose existence predates the development of photography and the Earth themselves, the sun. Compared to other forms of photography, such as the early daguerreotype and calotype, and modern cameras derived from the camera obscura, cyanotype printing is easy, simple, and inexpensive to produce. Furthermore, the photographic device of the sun print stands out amongst the industry’s developments and variants for its unique stylistic and functional contributions.
The sun printing process, as created by Sir John Herschel, involves easily accessible materials: plain paper, a sheet of glass, water, and two chemicals, ferric ammonium citrate, which can normally be found in iron and vitamin supplements, and potassium ferricyanide. [1] To make a print, one first sensitizes the designated print paper, applying a solution of the water and two chemicals onto regular paper. Once the paper has dried flat, it is ready to go through the solar printing press. At this stage, “the object to be copied [is] placed on the sensitive paper and pressed into contact under a sheet of glass,” exposed to the sun and absorbing its light. [2] Depending on the amount of sun present and desired exposure for the object, the paper may absorb the sunlight for a few minutes or more, although cyanotypes seldom take long to make. The sun-soaked cyanotype paper creates a negative for the final print, a shape and appearance that is based on the qualities of the subject of the photograph. The negative forms itself around the subject’s shape, as well as its density and level of translucence. Depending on the make of the subject, “the picture is obtained by unequal transmission of light through [its] different parts.” [3] Finally, the paper is washed in plain water and set again to dry, the negatives forming a visible image over a rich blue background.
Today, sun printing is made even easier, with the same materials readily available, special cyanotype chemical sets, and even sun printing kits with pre-sensitized paper. Using the latter, a SunPrint Paper Kit from University of California, Berkeley’s Lawrence Hall of Science, I was able to observe the chemical change in sun printing for myself this past weekend. I decided to do two prints, experimenting with the kit, and in both trials, I was enlightened and challenged. Following the instructions from the package, I set my SunPrint paper flat on a piece of cardboard, with the blue cyanotype side facing upwards. Since the kit came with paper ready to be sunprinted, no chemical mixing was required on my part. I then proceeded to place my subjects on top of the paper, arranging them inside before bringing them out into the sun. I also prepared a large bucket of plain sink water to wash the paper with after being exposed and let the prints dry and develop on the same cardboard sheet they were formed on.

As encouraged by my SunPrint kit, I opted for more dynamic, three-dimensional subjects for my first print. I arranged a chocolate, glasses, barrette clips, and my keychain onto the paper, for a “What’s In My Bag” theme. While the kit also came with a glass acrylic sheet, I was instructed to omit it, having larger, non-flattening objects. I quickly came to regret this, as bringing them into the sun also brought them into the strong winds of the weekend, and while the objects were large, they were lightweight and moved around during the photographic process. I waited for about five minutes for the paper to receive adequate sun exposure, although the best I could do was guess when that would be. According to SunPrint, I was to leave the paper under the sun until its originally blue face turned almost-white, avoiding overexposure. Unfortunately, there was no further specification on what “almost-white” looked like.My final print, post-wash and fully dry, was admittedly underwhelming; only the glasses were recognizable, while the chocolate was just a blob, keys finger-like and chain-less, and barrettes nowhere to be found. Although exposure was decent and even interesting, as the image of the glasses had its own highlights, shadows, and shape, I deduced that my problem here involved my object’s surface areas and their direct contact to the paper. Stabilizing them from the wind, I also realized, would have made for more legible silhouettes.
My second attempt diverted from my first in a multitude of ways. Rather than selecting inanimate, undependably structured subjects, I opted to use flowers and leaves, which historically have been very popular for cyanotype prints. In fact, botanists embraced the development of cyanotype in blueprinting and documenting flora, for its ability to capture different details of the subject, such as its gradients, patterns, and permission of light passage. [4] The first book to ever be photographically printed was actually scientific manual British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions by Anna Atkins, who found that it would have been too difficult to depict such details in hand drawings. [5] Taking inspiration from Atkins and other botanists, I arranged a dried and wilted flower, leaves, and a small fresh flower onto my new sheet of SunPrint paper, pressing them down with the provided acrylic sheet to keep them from moving. While the end result resembled online examples of cyanotype prints more than my first print, my pitfall with this trial, I believe, was overexposure. In waiting too long for the paper to become “almost-white,” the negatives that had developed came to only depict the silhouette shape of my objects, without any of the details and textures of the flowers and leaves. I am still happy with the produced print but now wonder if this was a result of overexposure only, or if the subjects themselves did not allow for much light to shine through them for the details to be absorbed.
In exploring the impact cyanotypes have on photography and the human experience of such photos, art historian and Worcestor Art Museum curator Kristina Wilson suggests that the blue of the cyanotype, with its color symbolism as well as its imperfection and “falseness,” “disrupts [the] sense of the passage of time,” of “past-ness” that photographs typically index. [6] Stylistically, cyanotypes differ greatly from other photos. Notably, from my own prints, the blue connotes firstly architecture, x-rays, and blueprints as we know them today and, secondly, a peaceful sky--neither of which were part of the subject matter itself. Had these been captured with a different device, they would not relay the same messages. Particularly, due to overexposure and softened edges, the second cyanotype disregards passage of time entirely, as the dried flower can in no way be detected definitively as already wilted and dead. The print also shows a beautiful, isolated scene in a field or garden setting, with leaves and flowers resembling nonexistent butterflies surrounding the main flower.
As seen with British Algae and the print of my glasses, cyanotype prints record, highlight, and capture life and all of its useful details. Yet, beyond that, the style of this photographic process leaves room for life to be created, returned, and reimagined, too. In copying the world in a blue world of its own, there is no surprise that cyanotype has persisted to be a presence in the world of photography throughout the years.