These algae prints were misattributed for more than a century before art historian Larry Schaaf discovered that they were the work of British botanist Anna Atkins.
As a pioneer of cyanotype photograms, a process in which sunlight (not a camera) imprints over objects on a piece of coated paper, Atkins produced the blueprints for a book entitled Manual of British Algæ in 1841. She just never got any credit.
Thanks to Larry Schaaf’s book of Atkins’s work, promptly titled Sun Gardens: Victorian Photograms, her work continues to see the light of day.
