Iconic Visionaries of Design — Anna Atkins
Examining The History of Infographics and Data Visualization
It is hard to believe it has been a year since our last installment of Iconic Visionaries. This is our tenth installment, but it is effectively a new season (or maybe volume). So don’t expect this article to follow the same path as the others.
This story begins in 1843. It begins with John Herschel. We have written about John before, though not at Charting Ahead. We have also written about optics before (history buffs should really check out our Circa Navigate offering). So finding ourselves at the intersection of Herschel and optics is not revolutionary. His invention of cyanotype process arguably was. The cyanotype is more commonly known as the blueprint.
Enter Anna Atkins. Anna was a friend of Herschel who learned about his new process. She quickly adopted the technique and used it to create some truly iconic imagery or photograms to be more exact. These images were then collected and used to create a book. This quickly popularized the new technology.
Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions was the first book with photo illustrations. It made Anna — the first female photographer. Perhaps more amazingly, it made algae interesting! Original copies of her works, which totaled three volumes, are exceedingly difficult to find. The links we have include here are to other authors but include the original imagery (if not the text).
Anna’s photography would eventually captured ferns, flowers, and other flora as well. While her work inspired others in the art world, the more well-known evolution of blueprints would only come after both Herschel & Atkins were dead.
Blueprints for construction and architecture would gain popularity in 1872. By the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition, the Swiss had created a machine for their production. Blueprints would remain popular for decades and while the technology has changed, much of it still exists in our digitized world today.
These two separate uses of the cyanotype technology intersect one last time in our story. Looking at the photograms captured by Anna, one is instantly struck by the intricacy and precision that she captured. Her visionary work provided views that were otherwise only available via pencil drawings, a process that was in no way conducive to mass production. In comparison, many blueprints actually feel rough in comparison.
It also interesting how closely these images mirror far more contemporary concepts. In this image, we see Anna’s seaweed compared to a modern computer image of the internet.
While Anna’s work may not exactly be design, her vision inspired plenty of it. It is iconic and compelling, intricate and precise. It is perhaps fair to note that she herself was far more practical about her task, but it also true that she clearly felt it was a work of beauty.
The difficulty of making accurate drawings of objects so minute as many of the Algae and Confervae has induced me to avail myself of Sir John Herschel’s beautiful process of Cyanotype, to obtain impressions of the plants themselves, which I have much pleasure in offering to my botanical friends.
Thanks for reading!
