Tonbridge woman's early blueprints inspired Beatles photographer Linda McCartney
Linda McCartney was in love with photography long before she fell for the charms of her superstar musician husband, Paul.
The New Yorker's iconic images of everyone from the Rolling Stones to Bob Dylan captured the spirit of an era and are still exhibited all over the world.But, at home in Sussex, she spent many hours experimenting with a camera-less technique first popularised way back in the early days of photography by a woman from Tonbridge.
Power of the Sun
Anna Atkins, widely recognised as the first person to publish a book illustrated with photographic images, was a botanist when she began to experiment with a newly-invented technique using the power of the sun to reproduce images.
By laying a piece of dried seaweed or fern onto light-sensitised chemically-treated paper and exposing it to the sun, she found she could create a white image on a blue background. With a subtle range of shade and texture, the pictures she created were striking and strangely lifelike.
The technique itself, the original "blue-print", would also prove useful for copying architectural plans and mechanical drawings. The cyanotype photographic process had been invented in 1842 by a family friend, celebrated astronomer Sir John Herschel, who lived in Hawkhurst.
Having painstakingly produced 250 etchings to illustrate one of her father's books, Atkins lost no time in adopting this speedier method of recording her botanical specimens. When she published Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions the following year, she earned her own place in photographic history.
By: Jane Bakowski
Source: Kent Live
