Reckon (2020)

Jane Buyers
Reckon
2020
archival digital print
edition of 3, #2
6 x 4 ½ inches (image size), 10 x 8 inches (sheet size)
 
"The leaf images were created with cyanotype, an early form of non-silver photography, particularly identified with Anna Atkins. In the mid-19th century, Anna Atkins, a trained British botanist, was the first person to recognize the potential of the cyanotype process to photograph botanical specimens. She published a series of remarkable albums of botanical illustrations, using cyanotype.
 
The leaf images are of wild mustard plants from my garden, which I placed on a sheet of paper coated in a cyanotype solution and exposed it to the sun, creating a negative of the plants on a blue ground. I then turned the image into a positive, using a xerox printer. To complete the work, the leaf imagery was combined digitally with a digitally reproduced page from a 1914 french primary school notebook, covered with hand-written calculations." — Jane Buyers