Anna Atkins
Photographer, Naturalist, Innovator
Establishing a place in the scientific annals for one of photography’s most underappreciated pioneers, Corey Keller’s intimate biography of Anna Atkins reveals a remarkable, unorthodox Victorian scientist.
Atkins, the creator of the first book illustrated with photographs, was an amateur scholar of unusual ambition at a time when women’s contributions to science were treated as second-rate. Her father, Royal Society fellow John George Children, encouraged her to pursue learning with unimpeded rigor. Growing up in a home abuzz with exciting, often dangerous experiments, Atkins was an early participant in the technological marvels that led to the invention of the modern photograph. The book describes how Atkins mastered the cyanotype printing method, becoming an omnivorous collector and printer of natural specimens from Great Britain and around the globe. Atkins’s thoroughness and versatility left long shadows in the fields of photography, botany, and printmaking.
This volume is replete with full-scale reproductions of Atkins’s breathtaking collection of cyanotypes, as well as period illustrations and photographic inserts from contemporary sources, resulting in a remarkable visual feast. Ample attention is paid to the role which Atkins’s artistic judgment played in her productions, transforming her scientific documents into works of art. The book also captures a hinge point in the development of modern science with compelling analyses of how networks of amateurs and “outsiders,” especially women, moved entire fields of knowledge forward. New scientific institutions, facing increasing professionalization, ended up locking amateurs like Atkins out of the center of scientific debate—a reality that leads the book’s investigations to stall somewhat against the inevitable limitations that Atkins faced in her career.
Wrestling with the stultifying conditions women scientists faced in the late Victorian era, Anna Atkins is a revealing biography of a woman who was crucial to the development of photography.
Reviewed by
Isaac Randel
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. No fee was paid by the publisher for this review. Foreword Reviews only recommends books that we love. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
