Sun Gardens: Victorian Photograms

(New York). (1985). 4to. 1st edition. Slight shelfwear to cloth, with almost imperceptible lean to binding. Minor edgewear to d.j., with tiny tears to extremities and along top edge. Two small scuffs to bottom edge of rear d.j. panel, with rubbing at fore-margin and a tiny chip to fore-edge at fold. Mild toning and dulling to d.j. spine and panel margins. Front d.j. flap price-clipped. NF/VG. Anna Atkins is widely recognized as the first female photographer and the first person to publish a book of photographs. Using the brand new cyanotype technique invented in 1842, Atkins began creating prints of British algae and flora. There is something immediate and almost magical in these images: impressions of living objects carried forward through time, more like fossils than photographs. The diaphanous texture of a petal, the fluffy seed and broken stem, all expressed in frozen negative. In Sun Gardens, photo-historian Larry Schaaf reproduces a selection of these images--originally self-published in three volumes--and sets them in the context of their time.