Mini project: Folktales and photography

 

 

As a small side project I wanted to respond to a herbal folktale using only photography. I love the cyanotype process and I had in mind a story collected from master storyteller and Scottish Traveller Duncan Williamson. This particular story is set on the Isle of Barra in the Outer Hebrides and centres around a particular species of seaweed known locally as fair maid’s tresses – chodra filum I think. You can read the story published on this blog with kind permission from Linda Williamson here.

But what are cyanotypes and why do I love this form of photography so much?

Basically, a cyanotype is a photographic printing process that produces a cyan-blue print. Engineers used the process well into the 20^th century as a simple low-cost way to produce copies of their drawings – this is where the tern ‘blueprint’ comes from. The process uses two chemicals: ferric ammonium citrate and potassium ferricyanide.

Although the process was discovered by Sir John Herschel he considered it merely as a means of reproducing notes and diagrams. It was English botanist and photographer Anna Atkins who saw real potential in the process and took it a step further by creating a series of limited edition books that documented ferns and other plant life from her extensive collection of seaweed by placing each specimen directly onto chemically coated paper and exposing them to sunlight to create a silhouette effect. By using this photogram process she is considered the first female photographer and she is also believed to be the first person to create a book illustrated with photographs.

I wanted to make this connection with a story about seaweed and the first photographs of seaweed specimens by Anna Aitkens in this project. The story also mention cormorants – the black sea birds known as scarfies in Scots and sgarbh  in Scottish Gaelic.

I am lucky in that I have access to a darkroom and a UV exposure unit which makes making cyanotypes relatively simple. First I choose a photo, I invert it, perhaps increase the threshold and contrast then I reverse print it onto acetate. I then expose the image onto coated white cotton or paper using the UV exposure unit. The whole process takes no more than an hour. But the results are lovely.

Three of my cyanotypes are from digital drawings, some are from objects and the rest photographs. It is a really fun thing to play around with, if you ever get the chance I really recommend it.