Blue Prints: The Natural World In Cyanotype Photos

by Zeva Oelbaum (Photographer)

The cyanotype print is a visually arresting printing method whose small fame dates back to the pioneering nineteenth-century botanist Anna Atkins. Photographer Zeva Oelbaum revisits the beauty of the natural world, and pays homage to this botanist and this little-used and compelling process in Blue The Natural World in Cyanotype Photographs. This lushly illustrated book features captivating flower and animal images produced with a process that dates back to the birth of photography, but in a new light; butterflies, leaves, flowering plants, birds' nests, shells, and more are all seen in vibrant and striking contrast. Charmingly packaged, Blue Prints is an artistic revitalization of an important and unique printing process, and is the perfect gift book for photography and nature devotees.

Genres: Photography

96 pages, Hardcover

First published November 23, 2002

Reviews

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cyanotype is a photographic printing process that results in a print that is blue. Cyan comes from Greek, meaning a dark blue substance.

The pictures in Blue Prints: The Natural World in Cyanotype Photographs are all, as the title says, cyanotypes of objects from nature - leaves, flowers, feathers, eggs. They are quite striking. Some of them are obviously manipulated to make patterns not seen in nature. "Chicken Egg" (pages 40-41) and "Starfish" (pages 76-77), for example, both have added lines and shapes.

Some of these cyanotypes just look weird. "Toad" (page 29) is a cyanotype of a toad's skeleton, looking very much like a Rorschach print. Others are quite beautiful (many choices; see, for example, "Japanese Painted Fern" on page 59).

There is a very enthusiastic foreward by Tracy Chevalier, author of Girl with a Pearl Earring and, appropriately, The Virgin Blue.