by Sam Juliano
Just a little over three years ago an entry in the 2017 Caldecott Medal Contender series featured a resplendent picture book biography on Ana Lovelace titled Ada’s Ideas who was dubbed the world’s first computer programmer. The work’s author-illustrator Fiona Robinson, a Brooklyn based author-artist, has this past year again explored a prominent female living in a male-dominated age who is widely credited for being the very first person to publish a book of photography. Robinson’s wholly sublime release The Bluest of Blues: Anna Atkins and the First Book of Photographs bears a number of similarities to the earlier book contextually and in a thematic sense (Anna like Ada was basically reared by a single parent, both of whom ignored the ways of the time by encouraging her education) but Robinson has upped the ante, instilling a profound sensory air to the world’s most popular color. To achieve the authenticity she sought, Robinson walked through actual English meadows where she took photographs for their initial stage in her amazing illustrative process. While she developed into a master botanist her claim to fame is the cyanotype, photographic printing process that produces prints in a distinctive dark greenish-blue. The word “cyan” comes from the Greek, meaning “dark blue substance.” The process was invented by Sir John Herschel, a brilliant astronomer and scientist, in 1842 but Anna expanded to become the first person to publish a book illustrated with photographic images in addition to, according to some, the first woman to create a photograph. In the latter half of The Bluest of Blues and in some exceedingly useful end notes Robinson painstakingly defines the process, with stunning end paper shell and seaweed replications that bleed over onto the frontispiece.
Under a canopy of the deepest blue Anna is first seen with an arm full of flowers in an “air thick with butterflies and insects” as her beloved father “carries a jar of clamoring insects” in 1807, well over a hundred years after the famed German-born naturalist composed drawings that later distinguished her as a forerunner of entomology and botany. Robinson paints a canvas of idyllic immersion via pencil and watercolor featuring various shades of blue and white. The English meadow for all intents and purposes is Anna’s “forest primeval” in an early beckoning that surely rivals Longfellow’s. In one of Robinson’s most magnificent accents in the book she depicts an irresistible red poppy, which Anna places flat between the pages of a book for further examination. On a striking double page canvas the author-artist displays squared-out drawings of ten insects, all identified by their Latin names. The insect highlighted is the ladybird, which is referred to in America as the ladybug. The French and Japanese have their own names for it and according to Anna’s Dad this family of insect are identified by one special scientific name, Coccinellidae. Back in those days Latin was the universal language of identification.
Robinson points to an amusing irony in Anna’s father’s name, John Children, as he only has the one child due to the tragic early death of Anna’s mom shortly after childbirth. While Dad proceeds to teach her sciences such as chemistry, physics, zoology, botany and biology, she becomes in time a kind of “partner in research” due to her fascination with collecting specimens. A sumptuous aquamarine spread features the seashore where Anna’s father observes a crab as she holds seaweed over her head. Varieties of seaweed and shells are investigated and then drawn and recorded and her father adds scientific names on labels. But this time as Robinson proclaims:
Anna is a treasure hunter. Anna is an artist. Anna is a scientist.
Anna is officially a botanist by her early 20s. The British public are fascinated to hear about exotic treasures from all corners of the world, which are nurtured in greenhouses. Anna doesn’t travel, but keeps efficient records and employs her considerable skills as an illustrator to create images of the subjects. She advances her talent on drawing 250 illustrations on a book of shells that her father translated. Robinson depicts her holding an elephant-tusk shell from the Philippines, a painstaking task that requires lifelike replication, which is turn will be copied by an engraver for publication. Robinson’s encore of red appears in a lovely wedding page where Anna is depicted marrying John Pelly Atkins, the son of a former Lord Mayor of London under a cascade of flower pedals. The author-artist deftly employs dark silhouettes on a page where only men are allowed to join a scientific society. a nefarious practice that extended its ugly tentacles into the 1950’s, where among other injustices none other Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg was repeatedly denied admittance into college until her dogged persistence finally paid off. Juxtaposed at the forefront are the father-daughter team, who persevere due to the former’s confidence in his daughter’s academic ascendancy.
Some of Robinson’s loveliest tapestries are minimalist, like the pastel blue leitmotif introducing an herbarium, a collection of dried plants. Anna flattens and preserves seaweed, lichen, ferns and flowering plants, but as Robinson relates “It is a massive task…..and illustrating and publishing it would take far too long–her seaweed collection alone amounts to over 1,500 examples!” She wishes there were a quick and accurate way to copy her collection, but little does she know her dream is about to be realized, but not until she is first granted membership to the Royal Botanic Society in London, which Robinson relates was “one of the few institutions at the time to admit women.” The monumental achievement -visually recorded by another silhouette-laden vignette, albeit markedly upbeat- represented a breakthrough in her life and was followed by “The Gift” in 1941 – the discovery of the camera, of which one early example is handed over to Anna. A red ribbon around the box with the glass window accentuates a metamorphosis in technological advancement and for Anna through experimentation and hard work the ability to record real images.
The aforementioned cyanotype print is again broached in far more specific terms in the defining chapter Robinson dubs “The Bluest of Blues” (1942), when the great John Hershel himself, England’s most celebrated scientist of the time visits Anna and her father, introducing his new invention, one that tests the effect of sunlight on chemicals through the employment of just two chemicals, paper, water and strong sunlight. In an atmospheric period spread that recalls a scene out of Mary Shelley, though far less ominous Hershel speaks the words that leave Anna elated. Basically the process is “quick and simple” and the final image will never fade. The prints will always be blue due to the chemicals used in the process. Anna of course ponders a much different use for the cyanotypes. In vivid corresponding canvasses contrasting the yellow of sunlight and the blue of water Anna utilizes chemicals, darkness and light and the world’s most common element to her placement of seaweed on paper and almost by miracle the image of the seaweed can be clearly seen on the paper -a blue on blue that might induce adults readers of the book to croon some Bobby Vinton. Every minute component of the plant is visible.
In a country where rain is all too prevalent Anna exercises patience for the sunny days, which are vital to her new project and the one that would cement her fame for all-time. The book she created would astounding combine the science of botany with the realism of photography. This opens the doors to her seaweed collection, one too long hidden in drawers. One of Robinson’s most magnificent spreads envisions Anna, fulfilled and content, holding her completed book of seaweed cynotypes on a spread based in dark and navy blues alongside various types of seaweed, all identified by their Latin names. Incredibly, two thousand prints are created over ten years, and Anna’s first book is completed when she is forty-four. As if ordained in the infinite sphere, Anna dedicates her book to her father who is depicted with her in a celestial canvas. The book is titles Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions and in time it is forwarded on to some of Britain’s most heralded institutions including the British Museum and Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. Even Herschel himself receives a copy. Father and daughter in blue lights are bathed in the universality of her unmatched achievement.
Robinson’s final tapestry, and the one that brings the story’s emotional essence full circle returns Anna to the poppy field forty-five years previously. It’s a depiction that creeps up on you and it contains the author’s most beautiful prose in The Bluest of Blues. The scene represents one of the most moving in any picture book released this year. Again Anna is seduced by a red poppy, which as per Robinson is “A distant childhood memory. By extension this brings the visage of her father full focus, and Anna resolves to make this the memory of a lifetime by following each step to replicate the poppy white on blue. Amazingly enough the poppy cynotype still survives and can be observed at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
Author-artist extraordinaire Fiona Robinson
In an engaging afterward Robinson explains how Anna’s monogram “A.A.” was for a time misconstrued as “anonymous author.” Later research brought out the truth and biographical revelations on how Anna really adored her father and how humble yet proud she was of her work. The author admits that history grants us little information on her childhood, and that she put together some ideas that connect with her maturation as an artist. Robinson’s speculation powerfully bonds the readers to this seminal figure, and how her talent emerges and develops is that mush more fascinating and humane. The well researched book includes a page on “How to Make Your Own Cyanotypes” and a list of the institutions that are holding Anna’s Cyanotypes. It is to be noted that vintage fabrics and wallpapers, wood veneers and photographs assist in this deliciously diverse presentation, one where the complicated beauty of Atkins’ work is made gloriously accessible. No Caldecott discussion should exclude this sublime and inspiring work that unearths yet another figure who has so richly deserves this soulful re-visitation. The Bluest of Blues: Anna Atkins and the First Book of Photographs is masterful.
Note: This is the sixth entry in the 2019 Caldecott Medal Contender series. The annual venture does not purport to predict what the committee will choose, rather it attempts to gauge what the writer feels should be in the running. In most instances the books that are featured in the series have been touted as contenders in various online round-ups at children’s book sites, but for the ones that are not, the inclusions are a humble plea to the committee for consideration. It is anticipated the series will include in the neighborhood of around 15 to 20 titles; the order which they are being presented in is arbitrary, as every book in this series is a contender. Some of my top favorites of the lot will be done near the end. The awards will be announced in January, hence the reviews will continue until the early part of that month.