Cyanotypes were made famous by the first professional female photographer Anna Atkins after the publication of her book Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions. Invented in 1842, cyanotypes are made by hand-coating material with ferric iron salts, then reduced with ultraviolet light to insoluble ferrous iron salts and in turn further oxidised to form an image in Prussian blue. They are stable and permanent and produced on buffered, archival-quality heavyweight 100% rag paper. Each cyanotype is absolutely unique, every image generated using only the ultraviolet power of sunlight. The object to be photographed is placed close to the coated paper and exposed to the sun. I rely upon intuition combined with my continually developing understanding of the technical process to translate a visualised concept into an image on paper - to manifest in three dimensions that which takes form first in feelings, impressions and personal experience of the changing seasons.
"Modern facility is both a boon and a detriment; we are too prone to rely on the instruments and materials to produce pictures in spite of us, rather than to remember that any creative expression depends on knowledge, vision and taste, and on the complete domination of the medium by imagination and skill." - Ansel Adams
I have been making photographic images using analogue and alternative processes for more than twenty years. In addition to cyanotypes I also make traditional silver prints from large and small-format negatives by hand in York. I love working with these now old-fashioned materials, as I enjoy the space, time and focus which they require as well as the beauty of the finished images. It feels to me to be a more human process. It feels right.
Alun Kirby Fine Art Photography
|