Anna Atkins Was More Radical Than We Realise
The first time I made a cyanotype print, I wasn’t thinking about Victorian science or the history of photography. I was thinking about light. About the way ordinary objects could become extraordinary simply by placing them on coated paper and exposing them to the sun. Watching the deep Prussian blue emerge in the wash water felt almost magical.
It wasn’t until much later that I discovered Anna Atkins.
Like many people, I’d heard her name mentioned in passing as “the woman who made blue pictures of seaweed.” It sounded like an interesting footnote in photographic history, but nothing more. The deeper I looked, however, the more remarkable her story became. Anna Atkins wasn’t simply an early photographer. She was an innovator, a scientist, a publisher, and someone who quietly changed the relationship between photography and knowledge itself.
The more I learned about her, the more I realised we’ve been telling her story far too modestly.
Anna Atkins was far more radical than we realise—not because she marched in protest or delivered political speeches, but because she quietly demonstrated what women were capable of in a world determined to underestimate them.
A Woman Educated Against the Odds
To understand why Anna Atkins mattered, we first need to understand the world she lived in.
Born in 1799, Atkins grew up in a Britain where women had remarkably few legal rights. Women could not vote. Married women had little financial independence. Property generally belonged to fathers or husbands, and higher education was almost entirely closed to them.
Education for girls depended heavily upon class. Middle- and upper-class women might learn music, embroidery, drawing, languages and religious studies, while working-class girls often received very little formal education at all. Scientific careers simply weren’t considered appropriate.
Botany, however, occupied an unusual place.
Studying plants was seen as a respectable pastime because it combined nature with careful observation rather than laboratory experimentation. It became one of the few scientific disciplines where women could participate without provoking quite as much social resistance.
Anna Atkins was uniquely fortunate.
Her father, John George Children, was a distinguished scientist, mineralogist and librarian at the British Museum. After Anna’s mother died shortly after childbirth, he raised his daughter himself and encouraged an education that very few women of the time ever received.
Rather than treating science as something unsuitable for girls, he welcomed Anna into his work.
She accompanied him on scientific visits, learned taxonomy, developed exceptional observational skills and became an accomplished botanical illustrator. Before photography, scientific illustration depended entirely upon the ability of artists to reproduce specimens accurately by hand. Every tiny leaf, filament and vein required painstaking attention.
It demanded extraordinary patience.
It also took an enormous amount of time.
When Photography Changed Everything
Then, in 1842, everything changed.
Family friend Sir John Herschel invented the cyanotype process, using iron salts to create permanent blue photographic prints.
Herschel was fascinated by scientific discovery and continually explored new technologies, but even he probably couldn’t have predicted what Anna Atkins would do next.
Where many people saw an interesting photographic curiosity, Atkins saw an entirely new scientific tool.
Instead of spending hours drawing delicate botanical specimens by hand, she could place them directly onto sensitised paper and allow sunlight to produce a perfect silhouette.
Every branching frond of seaweed.
Every tiny stem.
Every fragile detail.
The specimen itself became the image.
Today we think of photography as art, journalism or personal memory, but Atkins immediately recognised something different: photography could become scientific evidence.
That insight was revolutionary.
The World’s First Photography Book
In 1843, only a year after Herschel introduced cyanotype, Anna Atkins began publishing Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions.
The title sounds modest.
Its importance is anything but.
The book is widely recognised as the first publication illustrated entirely with photographs.
Not one or two experimental images.
Not photographs pasted into a conventional book.
A complete scientific publication built around photography itself.
Because photography couldn’t yet be reproduced through printing presses, every individual cyanotype had to be made by hand and placed into each copy separately. Every book was effectively handmade.
Imagine producing dozens of copies where every single photograph had to be exposed, washed, dried and assembled one by one.
This wasn’t simply artistic experimentation.
It was an astonishing publishing achievement.
Atkins continued expanding the work over many years, sending updated instalments to subscribers and institutions as new specimens were documented.
In many ways she wasn’t just producing photographs.
She was inventing an entirely new way of publishing scientific knowledge.
Science Meets Art
One of the reasons Anna Atkins continues to fascinate modern audiences is that her work refuses to fit neatly into a single category.
Were her cyanotypes scientific documents?
Absolutely.
Were they works of art?
Without question.
Looking at them today, it’s difficult not to be struck by their extraordinary beauty.
The rich Prussian blue backgrounds.
The delicate white outlines.
The elegant compositions.
Modern audiences often discover Atkins through museums or photography exhibitions rather than scientific collections.
Ironically, what began as practical botanical documentation has become recognised as some of the most beautiful photographic work of the nineteenth century.
Perhaps that’s because great science and great art often begin in the same place—with careful observation.
Recognition That Arrived Far Too Late
Like many pioneering women, Anna Atkins spent much of history hidden in plain sight.
For years, the initials “A.A.” appearing on some of her works were even interpreted by some scholars as meaning “Anonymous Amateur.”
The irony is difficult to ignore.
There was nothing anonymous about her.
Nor was there anything amateur about producing the world’s first photographically illustrated book.
She was a respected botanist, an accomplished publisher and a photographic pioneer.
Fortunately, history has slowly begun correcting itself.
Today Atkins is celebrated internationally as one of photography’s founders, and original copies of Photographs of British Algae sell for extraordinary sums at auction.
Museums around the world now exhibit her cyanotypes as masterpieces that sit comfortably within both scientific and artistic history.
The recognition came more than a century late, but it came nonetheless.
Quiet Acts Can Change History
One of the things I admire most about Anna Atkins is that she wasn’t attempting to become a revolutionary.
She wasn’t campaigning publicly for women’s rights.
She wasn’t leading political movements.
She simply refused to accept the limitations other people quietly assumed for women.
Sometimes history changes because someone shouts.
Sometimes it changes because someone gets on with the work anyway.
Atkins demonstrated that women could contribute meaningfully to science, publishing and technological innovation simply by doing the work to an exceptional standard.
That may be one of the most radical acts of all.
It’s also worth remembering that she became a member of the Botanical Society of London in 1839, decades before women were admitted as Fellows of many major scientific institutions. Women would not become Fellows of the Royal Society until 1945.
She quietly occupied spaces that society insisted should not belong to women.
Why Her Story Matters To Me
I identify with Anna Atkins for reasons beyond cyanotype.
There are suggestions that she experienced what Victorian medicine described as “rheumatism”—a broad diagnosis that today might encompass several chronic pain conditions. While we cannot know precisely what she experienced, many historians have noted that she appears to have lived with recurring physical illness.
Living with chronic pain myself, I find that deeply moving.
Creative work doesn’t become less valuable because it is produced alongside illness.
Nor does disability diminish imagination.
Anna Atkins reminds me that important work can emerge from quiet persistence rather than dramatic moments of inspiration.
Her example encourages me whenever making work feels difficult.
She reminds me that consistency often changes history more effectively than speed.
How Far Have We Really Come?
In many respects, women’s lives have transformed since Anna Atkins’ lifetime.
We have the right to vote.
We can own property.
We pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, medicine and the arts.
Those freedoms exist because generations before us challenged systems that excluded them.
But equality is never something that simply arrives and stays forever.
Women remain underrepresented in many areas of culture and leadership. Many still experience discrimination linked to parenthood, age, appearance, disability or chronic illness. Progress has been remarkable, but it remains unfinished.
In my own experience, I have encountered assumptions not only because I am a woman but because of my disability and my regional accent. Neither should have any bearing on my ability to make art or contribute to culture.
Yet bias often persists in subtle ways.
Perhaps that’s why Anna Atkins feels so contemporary.
She reminds us that talent has always existed.
Opportunity has not.
A Legacy Written in Blue
When I make cyanotypes today, I’m participating in a conversation that began almost two centuries ago.
Every blue print carries echoes of Herschel’s invention, but it also carries something of Anna Atkins’ imagination.
She recognised possibilities that others overlooked.
She transformed an experimental photographic process into a scientific publishing tool.
She blurred the boundaries between documentation and beauty.
She quietly demonstrated that women belonged in science long before society was willing to admit it.
That seems a far more radical legacy than history has often given her credit for.
Perhaps the greatest tribute we can pay Anna Atkins isn’t simply remembering her name.
It’s continuing to ask who else history has overlooked.
Who are today’s Anna Atkinses, quietly changing the world while the rest of us are looking somewhere else?
I’d love to hear your thoughts. Why do you think Anna Atkins’ achievements remained overlooked for so long? Are there other forgotten women in photography or science whose stories deserve to be told?
About the Author
Jo Howell is a cyanotype artist, photographer and writer exploring the intersection of photography, history, science and creative practice. Through essays, workshops and original artworks, she aims to uncover the forgotten stories behind one of photography’s oldest processes while encouraging others to slow down, experiment and find joy in making by hand.
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