RARE Photo - Orig Cyanotype Street BOSTON 1920s Chinatown Laundry Barber 8x10

£353.43 £282.74 Buy It Now or Best Offer, £15.59 Shipping, 30-Day Returns, eBay Money Back Guarantee
Seller: dalebooks ✉️ (8,794) 100%, Location: Rochester, New York, US, Ships to: WORLDWIDE, Item: 304815822576 RARE Photo - Orig Cyanotype Street BOSTON 1920s Chinatown Laundry Barber 8x10. Chinatown, Boston (Cantonese: 唐人街; Jyutping: Tong4jan4gaai1) is a neighborhood located in downtown Boston, Massachusetts, US. It is the only surviving historic ethnic Chinese enclave in New England since the demise of the Chinatowns in Providence, Rhode Island and Portland, Maine after the 1950s.
RARE Original Photograph
 
 
Cyanotype
Chinatown - Boston 
Wa Chung Kee - Laundry - on Window
Barber shop
Stores
Horse and wagon, etc.
Boston, Massachusetts
 
ca  1925

For offer, a rare set of photos. Estate find. Vintage, Old, Original, Antique, NOT a Reproduction - Guaranteed !!  Great scene! I have several other Boston photos from this collection I will be listing. Advertising signs, etc. Railroad trolley tracks down street, etc. Actual measurement is 9 1/2 x 7 1/2 inches. One of a kind - unique.  In good to very good condition. Note punch holes to left side edge. Please see photos for details. Back is blank.  If you collect 20th century Americana history, American photography, culture, transportation, etc. this is a treasure you will not see again! Add this to your image or paper / ephemera collection. Perhaps genealogy research importance too. Combine shipping on multiple bid wins! 3091

Chinatown, Boston (Cantonese: 唐人街; Jyutping: Tong4jan4gaai1) is a neighborhood located in downtown Boston, Massachusetts, US. It is the only surviving historic ethnic Chinese enclave in New England since the demise of the Chinatowns in Providence, Rhode Island and Portland, Maine after the 1950s. Because of the high population of Asians and Asian Americans living in this area of Boston, there is an abundance of Chinese and Vietnamese restaurants located in Chinatown. It is one of the most densely populated residential areas in Boston and serves as the largest center of its East Asian and Southeast Asian cultural life. Chinatown borders the Boston Common, Downtown Crossing, the Washington Street Theatre District, Bay Village, the South End, and the Southeast Expressway/Massachusetts Turnpike.[1] Boston's Chinatown is one of the largest Chinatowns outside of New York City.[2]

Boston (US: /ˈbɔːstən/),[7] officially the City of Boston, is the capital and largest city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the Northeastern United States. The city boundaries encompass an area of about 48.4 sq mi (125 km2)[8] and a population of 675,647 as of 2020.[3] The city is the economic and cultural anchor of a substantially larger metropolitan area known as Greater Boston, a metropolitan statistical area (MSA) home to a census-estimated 4.8 million people in 2016 and ranking as the tenth-largest MSA in the country.[9] A broader combined statistical area (CSA), generally corresponding to the commuting area[10] and including Worcester, Massachusetts and Providence, Rhode Island, is home to approximately 8.2 million people, making it the sixth most populous in the United States.[11]

Boston is one of the oldest municipalities in America, founded on the Shawmut Peninsula in 1630 by Puritan settlers from the English town of the same name.[12][13] It was the scene of several key events of the American Revolution and the nation's founding, such as the Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party, the Battle of Bunker Hill, and the siege of Boston. Upon American independence from Great Britain, the city continued to be an important port and manufacturing hub as well as a center for education and culture.[14][15] The city has expanded beyond the original peninsula through land reclamation and municipal annexation. Its rich history attracts many tourists, with Faneuil Hall alone drawing more than 20 million visitors per year.[16] Boston's many firsts include the United States' first public park (Boston Common, 1634), first public or state school (Boston Latin School, 1635)[17] first subway system (Tremont Street subway, 1897),[18] and first large public library (Boston Public Library, 1848).

Today, Boston is a center of scientific research; the area's many colleges and universities, notably Harvard and MIT, make it a world leader in higher education,[19] including law, medicine, engineering and business, and the city is considered to be a global pioneer in innovation and entrepreneurship, with nearly 5,000 startups.[20][21][22] Boston's economic base also includes finance,[23] professional and business services, biotechnology, information technology, and government activities.[24] Boston is a hub for LGBT culture and LGBT activism in the United States. Households in the city claim the highest average rate of philanthropy in the United States.[25] Boston businesses and institutions rank among the top in the country for environmental sustainability and new investment.[26]

History

Main article: History of Boston

For a chronological guide, see Timeline of Boston.

Indigenous era

Prior to European colonization, the region around modern-day Boston was inhabited by the indigenous Massachusett. Their habitation consisted of small, seasonal communities. The people who lived in the area most likely moved between inland winter homes along the Charles River (called Quinobequin, meaning "meandering," by the Native people) and summer communities on the coast. Game was more easily hunted inland during bare-tree seasons and fishing shoals and shellfish beds were most easily exploited during the summer months.[27][28]

Being surrounded by foul-smelling mudflats during the temperate part of the year, the Shawmut Peninsula itself was more sparsely occupied than its surroundings before the arrival of Europeans. Nevertheless, archeological excavations have revealed one of the oldest fishweirs in New England on Boylston Street. Native people constructed this weir to trap fish as early as 7,000 years before European arrival in the Western Hemisphere.[28][27][29]

Founding by Europeans

The first European to live in what would become Boston was a Cambridge-educated Episcopalian cleric named William Blaxton. He was the person most directly responsible for the foundation of Boston by Puritan colonizers in 1630. This occurred after Blaxton invited one of their leaders, Isaac Johnson to cross Back Bay from the failing colony of Charlestown and share the peninsula. This the Puritans did in September 1630.[30][31][32]

The name "Boston"

Before dying on September 30, 1630, one of Johnson's last official acts as the leader of the Charlestown community was to name their new settlement across the river "Boston”. He named the settlement after his hometown in Lincolnshire, the place from which he, his wife (namesake of the Arbella) and John Cotton (grandfather of Cotton Mather) had emigrated to New England. The name of the English town ultimately derives from its patron saint, St. Botolph, in whose church John Cotton served as the rector until his emigration with Johnson. In early sources the Lincolnshire Boston was known as "St. Botolph's town", later contracted to "Boston". Before this renaming the settlement on the peninsula had been known as "Shawmut" by Blaxton and "Trimountain" by the Puritan settlers he had invited.[33][34][35][36][37][38]

Puritan occupation

The Puritan influence on Boston began even before its foundation, with the 1629 Cambridge Agreement. This document created the Massachusetts Bay Colony and was signed by its first governor John Winthrop. Puritan ethics and their focus on education influenced the early history of the city. America's first public school, Boston Latin School, was founded in Boston in 1635.[17][39]

John Hull and the pine tree shilling played a central role in the establishment of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and the Old South Church in the 1600s. In 1652 the Massachusetts legislature authorized John Hull to produce coinage. "The Hull Mint produced several denominations of silver coinage, including the pine tree shilling, for over 30 years until the political and economic situation made operating the mint no longer practical."[40] King Charles II for reasons which were mostly political deemed the "Hull Mint" high treason which had a punishment of being hanged, drawn and quartered. "On April 6, 1681, Edward Randolph petitioned the king, informing him the colony was still pressing their own coins which he saw as high treason and believed it was enough to void the charter. He asked that a writ of Quo warranto (a legal action requiring the defendant to show what authority they have for exercising some right, power, or franchise they claim to hold) be issued against Massachusetts for the violations."[41]

Boston was the largest town in the Thirteen Colonies until Philadelphia outgrew it in the mid-18th century.[42] Boston's oceanfront location made it a lively port, and the city primarily engaged in shipping and fishing during its colonial days. However, Boston stagnated in the decades prior to the Revolution. By the mid-18th century, New York City and Philadelphia surpassed Boston in wealth. During this period, Boston encountered financial difficulties even as other cities in New England grew rapidly.[43][44]

Revolution and the siege of Boston

Main articles: Boston campaign and Siege of Boston

In 1773, a group of angered Bostonian citizens threw a shipment of tea by the East India Company into Boston Harbor in protest of the Tea Act, an event known as the Boston Tea Party that escalated the American Revolution.

Map of Boston in 1775

Map showing a British tactical evaluation of Boston in 1775

The weather continuing boisterous the next day and night, giving the enemy time to improve their works, to bring up their cannon, and to put themselves in such a state of defence, that I could promise myself little success in attacking them under all the disadvantages I had to encounter.

William Howe, 5th Viscount Howe, in a letter to William Legge, 2nd Earl of Dartmouth, about the British army's decision to leave Boston, dated March 21, 1776.[45]

Many crucial events of the American Revolution[46] occurred in or near Boston. The city's mob presence along with the colonists' growing lack of faith in either Britain or its Parliament fostered a revolutionary spirit in the city.[43] When the British parliament passed the Stamp Act in 1765, a Boston mob ravaged the homes of Andrew Oliver, the official tasked with enforcing the Act, and Thomas Hutchinson, then the Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts.[43][47] The British sent two regiments to Boston in 1768 in an attempt to quell the angry colonists. This did not sit well with the colonists. In 1770, during the Boston Massacre, British troops shot into a crowd that had started to violently harass them. The colonists compelled the British to withdraw their troops. The event was widely publicized and fueled a revolutionary movement in America.[44]

In 1773, Parliament passed the Tea Act. Many of the colonists saw the act as an attempt to force them to accept the taxes established by the Townshend Acts. The act prompted the Boston Tea Party, where a group of angered Bostonian citizens threw an entire shipment of tea sent by the East India Company into Boston Harbor. The Boston Tea Party was a key event leading up to the revolution, as the British government responded furiously with the Coercive Acts, demanding compensation for the destroyed tea from the Bostonians.[43] This angered the colonists further and led to the American Revolutionary War. The war began in the area surrounding Boston with the Battles of Lexington and Concord.[43][48]

Boston itself was besieged for almost a year during the siege of Boston, which began on April 19, 1775. The New England militia impeded the movement of the British Army. Sir William Howe, then the commander-in-chief of the British forces in North America, led the British army in the siege. On June 17, the British captured the Charlestown peninsula in Boston, during the Battle of Bunker Hill. The British army outnumbered the militia stationed there, but it was a pyrrhic victory for the British because their army suffered irreplaceable casualties. It was also a testament to the skill and training of the militia, as their stubborn defence made it difficult for the British to capture Charlestown without suffering further irreplaceable casualties.[49][50]

Several weeks later, George Washington took over the militia after the Continental Congress established the Continental Army to unify the revolutionary effort. Both sides faced difficulties and supply shortages in the siege, and the fighting was limited to small-scale raids and skirmishes. The narrow Boston Neck, which at that time was only about a hundred feet wide, impeded Washington's ability to invade Boston, and a long stalemate ensued. A young officer, Rufus Putnam, came up with a plan to make portable fortifications out of wood that could be erected on the frozen ground under cover of darkness. Putnam supervised this effort, which successfully installed both the fortifications and dozens of cannon on Dorchester Heights that Henry Knox had laboriously brought through the snow from Fort Ticonderoga. The astonished British awoke the next morning to see a large array of cannons bearing down on them. General Howe is believed to have said that the Americans had done more in one night than his army could have done in six months. The British Army attempted a cannon barrage for two hours, but their shot could not reach the colonists' cannons at such a height. The British gave up, boarded their ships and sailed away. Boston still celebrates "Evacuation Day" each year. Washington was so impressed, he made Rufus Putnam his chief engineer.[48][49][51]

Post-revolution and the War of 1812

Boston, as the Eagle and the Wild Goose See It, an 1860 photograph by James Wallace Black, was the first recorded aerial photograph

State Street in 1801

After the Revolution, Boston's long seafaring tradition helped make it one of the nation's busiest ports for both domestic and international trade. Boston's harbor activity was significantly curtailed by the Embargo Act of 1807 (adopted during the Napoleonic Wars) and the War of 1812. Foreign trade returned after these hostilities, but Boston's merchants had found alternatives for their capital investments in the interim. Manufacturing became an important component of the city's economy, and the city's industrial manufacturing overtook international trade in economic importance by the mid-19th century. A network of small rivers bordering the city and connecting it to the surrounding region facilitated shipment of goods and led to a proliferation of mills and factories. Later, a dense network of railroads furthered the region's industry and commerce.[52]

During this period, Boston flourished culturally, as well, admired for its rarefied literary life and generous artistic patronage,[53][54] with members of old Boston families—eventually dubbed Boston Brahmins—coming to be regarded as the nation's social and cultural elites.[55] They are often associated with the American upper class, Harvard University;[56] and the Episcopal Church.[57][58]

Boston was an early port of the Atlantic triangular slave trade in the New England colonies, but was soon overtaken by Salem, Massachusetts and Newport, Rhode Island.[59] Boston eventually became a center of the abolitionist movement.[60] The city reacted strongly to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850,[61] contributing to President Franklin Pierce's attempt to make an example of Boston after the Anthony Burns Fugitive Slave Case.[62][63]

In 1822,[14] the citizens of Boston voted to change the official name from the "Town of Boston" to the "City of Boston", and on March 19, 1822, the people of Boston accepted the charter incorporating the city.[64] At the time Boston was chartered as a city, the population was about 46,226, while the area of the city was only4.8 sq mi (12 km2).[64]

19th century

Painting with a body of water with sailing ships in the foreground and a city in the background

Downtown Boston from Dorchester Heights in 1841

Tremont Street in 1843

The Old City Hall was home to the Boston city council from 1865 to 1969.

View of Boston by J. J. Hawes, c. 1860s–1880s

Colored print image of a city square in the 1900s

Haymarket Square in 1909

In the 1820s, Boston's population grew rapidly, and the city's ethnic composition changed dramatically with the first wave of European immigrants. Irish immigrants dominated the first wave of newcomers during this period, especially following the Great Famine; by 1850, about 35,000 Irish lived in Boston.[65] In the latter half of the 19th century, the city saw increasing numbers of Irish, Germans, Lebanese, Syrians,[66] French Canadians, and Russian and Polish Jews settling in the city. By the end of the 19th century, Boston's core neighborhoods had become enclaves of ethnically distinct immigrants with their residence yielding lasting cultural change. Italians became the largest inhabitants of the North End,[67] Irish dominated South Boston and Charlestown, and Russian Jews lived in the West End. Irish and Italian immigrants brought with them Roman Catholicism. Currently, Catholics make up Boston's largest religious community,[68] and the Irish have played a major role in Boston politics since the early 20th century; prominent figures include the Kennedys, Tip O'Neill, and John F. Fitzgerald.[69]

Between 1631 and 1890, the city tripled its area through land reclamation by filling in marshes, mud flats, and gaps between wharves along the waterfront.[70] The largest reclamation efforts took place during the 19th century; beginning in 1807, the crown of Beacon Hill was used to fill in a 50-acre (20 ha) mill pond that later became the Bulfinch Triangle and Haymarket Square. The present-day State House sits atop this lowered Beacon Hill. Reclamation projects in the middle of the century created significant parts of the South End, the West End, the Financial District, and Chinatown.[citation needed]

After the Great Boston fire of 1872, workers used building rubble as landfill along the downtown waterfront. During the mid-to-late 19th century, workers filled almost 600 acres (240 ha) of brackish Charles River marshlands west of Boston Common with gravel brought by rail from the hills of Needham Heights. The city annexed the adjacent towns of South Boston (1804), East Boston (1836), Roxbury (1868), Dorchester (including present-day Mattapan and a portion of South Boston) (1870), Brighton (including present-day Allston) (1874), West Roxbury (including present-day Jamaica Plain and Roslindale) (1874), Charlestown (1874), and Hyde Park (1912).[71][72] Other proposals were unsuccessful for the annexation of Brookline, Cambridge,[73] and Chelsea.[74][75]

20th century

Fenway Park, home of the Boston Red Sox, opened in 1912.[76] 

Many architecturally significant buildings were built during these early years of the 20th century: Horticultural Hall,[77] the Tennis and Racquet Club,[78] Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum,[79] Fenway Studios,[80] Jordan Hall,[81] and the Boston Opera House.  The Longfellow Bridge,[82] built in 1906, was mentioned by Robert McCloskey in Make Way for Ducklings, describing its "salt and pepper shakers" feature.[83]

Logan International Airport opened on September 8, 1923.[84] The Boston Bruins were founded in 1924 and played their first game at Boston Garden in November 1928.[85]

Boston went into decline by the early to mid-20th century, as factories became old and obsolete and businesses moved out of the region for cheaper labor elsewhere.[86] Boston responded by initiating various urban renewal projects, under the direction of the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) established in 1957. In 1958, BRA initiated a project to improve the historic West End neighborhood. Extensive demolition was met with strong public opposition, and thousands of families were displaced.[87]

The BRA continued implementing eminent domain projects, including the clearance of the vibrant Scollay Square area for construction of the modernist style Government Center. In 1965, the Columbia Point Health Center opened in the Dorchester neighborhood, the first Community Health Center in the United States. It mostly served the massive Columbia Point public housing complex adjoining it, which was built in 1953. The health center is still in operation and was rededicated in 1990 as the Geiger-Gibson Community Health Center.[88] The Columbia Point complex itself was redeveloped and revitalized from 1984 to 1990 into a mixed-income residential development called Harbor Point Apartments.[89]

By the 1970s, the city's economy had begun to recover after 30 years of economic downturn. A large number of high-rises were constructed in the Financial District and in Boston's Back Bay during this period.[90] This boom continued into the mid-1980s and resumed after a few pauses. Hospitals such as Massachusetts General Hospital, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Brigham and Women's Hospital lead the nation in medical innovation and patient care. Schools such as the Boston Architectural College, Boston College, Boston University, the Harvard Medical School, Tufts University School of Medicine, Northeastern University, Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Wentworth Institute of Technology, Berklee College of Music, the Boston Conservatory, and many others attract students to the area. Nevertheless, the city experienced conflict starting in 1974 over desegregation busing, which resulted in unrest and violence around public schools throughout the mid-1970s.[91]

The cyanotype (from Ancient Greek κυάνεος - kuáneos, “dark blue” + τύπος - túpos, “mark, impression, type”) is a slow-reacting, economical photographic printing formulation sensitive to a limited near ultraviolet and blue light spectrum, the range 300 nm to 400 nm known as UVA radiation.[1] It produces a cyan-blue print used for art as monochrome imagery applicable on a range of supports, and for reprography in the form of blueprints. For any purpose, the process usually uses two chemicals: ferric ammonium citrate or ferric ammonium oxalate, and potassium ferricyanide, and only water to develop and fix. Announced in 1842, it is still in use.

History

Alternative

photography

Ice Cream Dreams, by Chris Marchant.jpg

Bleach bypassBromoil processCross processingCyanotypeDouble exposureGum bichromateInfraredOil print processPinholePlatinum processPolaroid artRedscaleSprocket holeThrough the ViewfinderUltraviolet

vte

The cyanotype was discovered,[2] and named thus, by Sir John Herschel who in 1842 published his investigation of light on iron compounds,[3] expecting that photochemical reactions would reveal, in form visible to the human eye, the infrared extreme of the electromagnetic spectrum detected by his father and the ultra-violet or ‘actinic’ rays that had been discovered in 1801 by Johann Ritter. Though Döbereiner[4] had published in 1831 in German on the light-sensitivity of ferric oxalate,[5] of which Herschel became aware during his visit to Hamburg, it is too lightly toned to form a satisfactory image and would require a second reaction to make a permanent print.[6]

Alfred Smee had in 1840 used electrochemistry to isolate a pure form of potassium ferricyanide,[7] which he sent to Herschel whose innovation was to use the ammonium iron(III) citrate or tartrate, then commercially available as an iron tonic and also introduced to him by Smee, for photographic purpose. He mixed the ammonium ferric citrate in a 20% aqueous solution, with 16% of the potassium ferricyanide, to make the sensitizer for coating plain paper. Exposed to sunlight, the ferric salt is reduced then combines with the ferricyanide to yield ferric ferrocyanide; Prussian blue (also known as Turnbull’s blue, or Berlin Blue in Germany).[8] Intensifying and fixing is achieved simply by rinsing the print in water in which unexposed sensitizer and reaction products are readily soluble.

Anna Atkins, a friend of the Herschel family, over 1843–61 and with the assistance of Anne Dixon, hand-printed several albums of botanical and textile specimens, especially Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions,[9] effectively the world’s first photographically-illustrated books.[10] After the Ross Antarctic Expedition (1839–1843) John Davis, artist and naturalist on the expedition, made or commissioned some cyanotypes in 1848 from seaweeds collected on the voyage.[11] Also in the Antipodes, Herbert Dobbie in imitation of Atkins produced a book New Zealand ferns: 148 varieties, but with double-sided pages of cyanotype prints, in 1880.[12]

John Mercer in the 1850s used the process for printing photographs onto cotton textiles and discovered means of toning the cyanotype violet, green, brown, red, or black.[8]

As with all of his photographic inventions, Herschel did not patent his cyanotype process. Chemist George Thomas Fisher Jr. quickly disseminated information on the new medium internationally in his popular 1843 fifty-page manual Photogenic manipulation, containing plain instructions in the theory and practice of the arts of photography: calotype, cyanotype, ferrotype, chrysotype, anthotype, daguerreotype, and thermography,[13] which the following year was translated into German and Dutch. The medium was immediately taken up and perfected by notable photographic practitioners of the time, including William Henry Fox Talbot[14] and Henry Bosse. The latter in making fine presentation albums of bridges and structural steel, foresaw an appropriate effect in colour: the intense blues of his refined cyanotypes from large glass plates were printed on fine French paper 37 cm x 43.6 cm, watermarked Johannot et Cie. Annonay, aloe's satin and leather bound.[15][16][17]

Commercial use came only in 1872, the year after Herschel's death. Marion and Company of Paris were first to market the cyanotype, under the proprietary name of “Ferro-prussiate,” for reprography of plans and technical drawings and to advantage due to its low cost and simplicity of processing which required only water. In this application and with the manufacture of blueprint papers, it remained the dominant reprographic process until the 1940s.[8] During the 217-day Siege of Mafeking of the town of Mafeking (Mafikeng) in South Africa during the Second Boer War from October 1899, the process was used to print stamps and banknotes.[1]

On the other hand the simple technology of the cyanotype remained accessible in the non-industrial realm and contributed to folk art; Francois Brunet notes the cyanotypes on cloth used by American home quilt-makers after 1880,[18] and Geoffrey Batchen cites thirty or more early cyanotyped family snapshots on cloth, sewn into pillow slips or quilts, in the collection of Eastman House.[8] Sandra Sider perpetuates this tradition in her own quilt making and as a proponent for increased museum acquisitions of Art Quilts.[19]

The cyanotype produced negatives, reversing the darks and lights of the image or object exposed on it, but Herschel also contrived a version, though more complex, to produce positives which he hoped would aid in his ambition to achieve images of full natural colour. Its difficulties were overcome by Henri Pellet in 1877 in his gum arabic iron cyanofer direct positive photographic tracing method,[6][20] which he commercialised.[21]

Process

Herschel's formula and method

In a typical procedure, equal volumes of an 8.1% (w/v) solution of potassium ferricyanide and a 20% solution of ferric ammonium citrate are mixed. The overall contrast of the sensitizer solution can be increased with the addition of approximately 6 drops of 1% (w/v) solution potassium dichromate for every 2 ml of sensitizer solution.[citation needed]

This mildly photosensitive solution is then applied to a receptive surface (such as paper or cloth) and allowed to dry in a dark place. Cyanotypes can be printed on any support capable of soaking up the iron solution. Although watercolor paper is a preferred medium, cotton, wool and even gelatin sizing on nonporous surfaces have been used. Care should be taken to avoid alkaline-buffered papers, which degrade the image over time.

An image can be produced by exposing sensitised paper to a source of ultraviolet light (such as sunlight) as a contact print. The combination of UV light and the citrate reduces the iron(III) to iron(II). This is followed by a complex reaction of the iron(II) with ferricyanide. The result is an insoluble, blue pigment (ferric ferrocyanide) known as Prussian blue.[22] The exposure time varies widely, from a few seconds in strong direct sunlight, to 10–20 minute exposures on a dull day.

After exposure, the paper is developed by washing in cold running water: the water-soluble iron(III) salts are washed away. The parts that were exposed to ultraviolet turn blue as the non-water-soluble Prussian blue pigment remains in the paper. This is what gives the print its typical blue color.[22] The blue color darkens upon drying.

Improved formula

The ingredients have remained mostly unchanged since its inception in 1840.[23] In 1994 Mike Ware improved on Herschel's formula with ammonium iron(III) oxalate, also known as ferric ammonium oxalate, to replace the variable and unreliable ammonium ferric citrate.[24] It has the advantages of being made up as a convenient single stock solution with a good shelf-life that does not nourish mould growth. The solution is well-absorbed by paper fibres, so does not pool on the surface or result in a ‘tackiness’ which may adhere to negatives. The paper better retains the pigment, with little of the Prussian blue image being lost in the washing stage, and exposure is shorter (ca. 4-8 times) than the traditional process. The cyanotype solution, even once its excess is washed off with water, remains photo-sensitive to some degree. A print that has been stored or displayed in bright light will eventually fade, the light causing a chemical reaction that changes the Prussian blue of the cyanotype to white. However, this process can be reversed by storing the cyanotypes in darkness. This will return them to their original vibrancy.[25]

Different composition levels of ferric ammonium citrate (or oxalate) and potassium ferricyanide will result in a variety of effects in the final cyanotypes. Mixtures of half ferric ammonium citrate and half potassium ferricyanide will produce a medium, even shade of blue that is most commonly seen in a cyanotype. A mix of one third ferric ammonium citrate and two thirds potassium ferricyanide will produce a darker blue, and a more high-contrast final print.[26]

Disadvantages of the Ware formula are a higher cost, more complicated preparation, and a level of toxicity.[27]

Printmaking

The simplest kind of cyanotype print is a photogram, made by arranging objects on sensitised paper. Fresh or pressed plants are a typical subject but any opaque to translucent object will create an image. A sheet of glass will press flat objects into close contact with the paper, resulting in a sharp image. Otherwise, three-dimensional objects or less than perfectly flat ones will create a more or less blurred image depending on the incidence and breadth of the light source.

A variant of photograms are chemigrams. The cyanotype solution is applied, poured or sprayed irregularly. A variant of action painting results from repeated washing and application, placing objects on top.

More sophisticated prints can be made from artwork or photographic images on transparent or translucent media. The cyanotype process reverses light and dark, so a negative original is required to print as a positive image. Large format photographic negatives or transparent digital negatives can produce images with a full tonal range, or lithographic film can be used to create high-contrast images.

The cyanotype may be combination-printed with gumoil,[28] or with a gum bichromate image, in which, for full-colour imaging from colour separations, it may form the blue layer; or it may be combined with a hand-painted or hand-drawn drawn layer.[29]

Toning

In a cyanotype, blue is usually the desired color. However, a variety of alternative effects can be achieved. These fall into three categories: reducing, intensifying, and toning.[30] It is common to bleach prints before toning them, but also possible to achieve different effects by toning prints without bleaching.[31]

Bleaching processes are ways of decreasing the intensity of the blue. Sodium carbonate, ammonia, borax, Dektol photographic developer and other chemicals can be used to do this. Household bleach is also effective, but tends to destroy the paper base. How much and how long to bleach depends on the image content, emulsion thickness and what kind of toning is being used. When using a bleaching agent it is important to control the bleaching process by washing in clean water as soon as the desired effect is achieved, to prevent loss of detail in the highlights.[32]

Intensifying processes will strengthen the blue effect. Chemicals used are hydrogen peroxide or mild acidic substances: citric acid, lemon juice, vinegar or acetic acid etc.[30] These can also used to speed up the oxidation process that creates the blue pigment.

Toning processes are used to change the color of the iron oxide in the print.[30] The color change varies with the reagent used. A variety of agents can be used, including various types of tea, coffee, wine, urine, tannic acid or pyrogallic acid, resulting in tones varying from brown to black.[33] Most toning processes will to some extent tint the white parts of a print.

Long-term preservation

One of the most robust of Victorian print technologies, cyanotypes are quite stable on their own, but in contrast to most historical and present-day processes, the prints do not react well to basic environments.[34] As a result, it is not advised to store or present the print in chemically buffered museum board, as this makes the image fade. Another unusual characteristic of the cyanotype is its regenerative behavior: prints that have faded due to prolonged exposure to light can often be significantly restored to their original tone by simply temporarily storing them in a dark environment.[35][36]

Cyanotypes on cloth are permanent but must be washed by hand with non-phosphate soap[37] so as to not turn the cyan to yellow.

Cyanotype in artistic practice

Artistic potential

The cyanotype's success as a form of artistic expression lies in its capacity for manipulation or distortion.[38] It produces distinctive effects and is versatile,[27] enabling prints to be made on a wide variety of surfaces,[24] including paper, wood, fabric,[39] glass, Perspex, bone, shell and eggshell, plaster and ceramics,[26][40] and at any scale; to date 2017, the largest is 276.64 m2 (2977.72 ft2), created by Stefanos Tsakiris in Thessaloniki, Greece, on 18 September 2017.[41] Robin Hill in 2001 exhibited Sweet Everyday, a 30.5 m (100 ft) cyanotype enwrapping Lennon, Weinberg, Inc.'s Soho gallery, and evoking wavy brushstrokes by placing ordinary shopping bags on photo-sensitive paper exposed to light.[42] For photographic negatives or positives enlargement directly onto the emulsion is not feasible due to the low sensitivity of the emulsion (except with a solar enlarger), so requires contact printing at 1:1 ratio. The low sensitivity permits progress to be inspected in a printing frame during exposure. Consequently and because of its long exposure scale it suits most negatives whether of high or low contrast. As a recognisably 19th century technology, artists like John Dugdale use it to evoke, or to critique, Victorian aesthetics and soclal constructs.[25]

The artist is not restricted to the reproduction of existing photographic negatives. Prints can be made of three-dimensional objects, utilising the ability of the objects to be placed on top of the photosensitive material. Once exposed to light, the final print is of an outline of an item[26] with internal detail where they allow light, depending on their relative transparency and exposure, to filter through; Anna Atkin's botanical cyanotypes sharply register the more transparent segments of a petal or leaf.[43] An object original, used to make a cyanotype photogram, including the human figure for example, is reproduced at actual size. Robert Rauschenberg's and Susan Weil’s collaborative cyanotypes, including Untitled (Double Rauschenberg), c.1950[44] were made by both artists lying down, hands held, on a large piece of photosensitive paper (treated with cyanotype chemicals). The resulting prints of their bodies in various poses are currently part of the Museum of Modern Art’s permanent collection.[38]

The powerful cyan hue may evolve a spiritual or emotional response as in the cosmic imagery of Carolyn Lewens[45] and naturally associates symbolically with sea or sky.[46] As German photographer Thomas Kellner notes of his 1997 Cubist multi-pinhole portraits of porcelain dolls; "I am specially happy with the blue colour in this series as the blue has a different depth in the background than a black print. Blue is still infinite, whereas black usually has the character of ending."[47] The negative form may be disorienting or surreal;[26] while white is often used to frame or highlight a central subject in many artistic media, the opposite may be true in the cyanotype, requiring the artist to adapt their ideas to the effect.[25]

Equally important is the expressive potential of the application of emulsion using brush, squeegee, roller or cloth, or by stamping, for calligraphic effect.[26]

Artists

Nineteenth century

Self portrait of Linley Sambourne modelling (10 January 1895) for Punch cartoon 'Quite English, You Know!

Britain

Anna Atkins, who was also an accomplished watercolorist, in her cyanotype botanical specimens, is considered the first to make art with the medium[48] in which the sea plants appear suspended in an oceanic blue,[49] and while her hundreds of images satisfy a scientific curiosity, their aesthetic quality has served as inspiration for cyanotype artists ever since.[43][50]

Cyanotype photography was popular in Victorian England, but became less popular as photography improved.[51] By the mid-1800s few photographers continued to exploit its accessible qualities and at the Great Exhibition of 1851, despite extensive displays of photographic technology, only a single example of the cyanotype process was included.[1][52] Peter Henry Emerson exemplified the British attitude that cyanotypes were unworthy of purchase or exhibition with his assertion that: “No one but a vandal would print a landscape in red, or in cyanotype.”[53]

Consequently, the process devolved to the proofing of domestic negatives by hobbyist photographers and to postcards, though another British scientist, Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society[54] Washington Teasdale,[55] delivered hundreds of lectures throughout his lifetime and was among the first to illustrate them with lantern slides, and, up to 1890, to record his experiments and specimens, used the cyanotype, a collection of which is held at the Museum of the History of Science, Oxford.[56]

Edwin Linley Sambourne used cyanotypes as an archive of reference images for his Punch cartoons.[57]

France

Curators and practitioners in France embraced the process. Caricaturist, illustrator, writer and portrait photographer Bertall (born Charles Albert, vicomte d’ Arnoux, comte de Limoges-Saint-Saëns) as partner of Hippolyte Bayard was commissioned in the 1860s to make cyanotype portraits from glass negatives for the Société d’Ethnographie for their publication Collection Anthropologique.[58] While artistic in execution they also satisfy with the scientific interests of the group as each subject is photographed nude with front, back and profile views, not in the field but in his studio. The project also takes advantage of the ease of making multiples of cyanotypes for the publication[59] Henri Le Secq's cyanotypes, which he made after he gave up photography after 1856 to continue painting and collecting art, were reprints of his famous works and made around 1870 as he was afraid of possible loss due to fading. He gave the reprints dates of the original negatives, some of which are still in good condition.[1] They are well-represented in French collections.[8] From the early 1850s through the 1870s Corot, with associated artists working in and near the town Barbizon adopted the hand-drawn cliché-verre, and though most were printed on salted or albumenized paper, some used the cyanotype.[60]

United States

In the US the medium persevered into the 20th century. Eadweard Muybridge made cyanotype contact prints of his animal locomotion sequences,[61] and Edward Curtis' ethnographic cyanotypes of native North Americans are preserved in the George Eastman House.

Pictorialism

Edward Steichen (1904) Midnight Lake George or Road into the Valley – Moonrise.

Bertha Evelyn Jaques, Untitled, c. 1900, cyanotype, NGA 136408

Pictorialists, throughout Europe and other western countries, in efforts to have photography accepted as an art form, emphasised handcraft in printing, in imitation of painting and drawing, and drew on Symbolist subject matter and themes. Many of the practitioners were respected amateurs whose work was rewarded in a system of international 'salons' run by such organisations as the Camera Club of New York, and competition promoted an elevated level of technical experimentation with all of the then-current processes, such as calotypy, cyanotypy, gum printing, platinum printing, bromoil and Autochrome colour.[62]

Clarence White's impeccable domestic and plein-air pictures are indebted in their bold composition to his contemporaries the painters Thomas Wilmer Dewing, William Merritt Chase and John White Alexander. His labor-intensive process entailed developing the negatives then making tests on cyanotype, playing with dimensions, proportions, and other variables, before making a print in platinum, which he then meticulously and expressively retouched. Alfred Steiglitz in White's portrait of him (1907) held in Princeton University Art Museum, appears gloweringly critical in the cyanotype print preserved there.[63]

At the turn of the century, painter-photographer Edward Steichen, then associated with Alfred Steiglitz who promoted the Photo-Secession and Pictorialism through his Camera Work (1903–1917) produced prints of Midnight Lake George now held in The Alfred Stieglitz Collection: Photographs at the Art Institute of Chicago where in 2007 scientific examination of the prints and his records concluded that cyanotype had been incorporated in their predominant gum bichromate over platinum production.[64] Steichen argued provocatively in the first issue of Camera Work that “every photograph is a fake from start to finish, a purely impersonal, unmanipulated photograph being practically impossible.”[64]

Photo-Secessionist Franco-American Paul Burty-Havilland, involved through marriage with the Lalique company, evinces a Japonisme in his moody cyanotype portraits and nudes made between 1898–1920.[65] Another American Pictorialist Fred Holland Day made cyanotypes of youths, nude or in sailor suits, in 1911, that are held in the Library of Congress,[66] and French artist Charles-François Jeandel printed his erotic imagery of bound women in his painting workshop in Paris and then in Charente 1890–1900.[67]

The more traditional American printmaker Bertha Jaques, aligned with the antimodernist views of the late Victorian Arts and Crafts movement, from 1894 produced more than a thousand cyanotype photographs of wildflowers.[68]

Impressionism

American artist Theodore Robinson painted in Giverny 1887–1892, contemporaneous with Monet of whom he made a portrait in cyanotype, and of the haystacks that Monet famously painted. He noted that “Painting directly from nature is difficult as things do not remain the same; the camera helps to retain the picture in your mind.”[69] He often drew a grid over his cyanotypes or albumen prints to assist transferring the composition, with compositional amendments, onto canvas, though conscious that “I must beware of the photo, get what I can of it and then go.” His photographic imagery is held in the Canajoharie Library and Art Gallery and the Terra Foundation for the Arts.[69][8]

Modernism

Arthur Wesley Dow's modernist approach was inlfuential on the Pictorilaists in the eloquently simple compositions of his New England environment, like Pine Tree (1895),[70] a cyanotype, related to his interest, while studying in France, in the flat, decorative qualities of Japanese art and that of Les Nabis.[71]

In Europe, Josef Sudek, the 'Poet of Prague' sometimes employed the cyanotype to impressionist effect during the early Modernist period.

Milan-born photographer, printmaker, painter, set designer and experimental film-maker, Luigi Veronesi, well-informed about the international debate on abstraction, was impressed with the abstract potential of the photogram. He participated in a 1934 exhibition in Paris with the international group of abstract artists 'Abstraction-Création', through which he met with Fernand Léger. He drew inspiration from Léger’s Ballet Mécanique, Surrealism via the Metaphysical painting of Georgio de Chirico, and fellow photographer Giuseppe Cavalli with whom, convinced of the essential ‘uselessness’ of art, in 1947 he founded a group named La Bussola (The Compass). Influenced by Constructivist theories (and politically aligned with Communism), Veronesi used the cyanotype photogram after 1932 as a means of revealing metaphysical qualities in objects.[72][73]

Late modern

Catherine Jansen (1981) The Blue Room, cyanotype on fabric, mixed media.

In a 2008 essay A.D. Coleman perceived a return of the legacy Pictorialist methods being applied in art photography from 1976,[62] a tendency represented in Francesca Woodman's late cyanotypes and in contact prints by Barbara Kasten and Bea Nettles.[74] Weston Naef, curator of photography at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, in a 1998 New York Times article by critic Lyle Rexer, confirmed that "Looking back at [photography's] pioneers, today's artists see a way to restore expression to an art beguiled by technology," referring to the loss of 'intimacy' in digital imaging to account for artists' attraction to daguerreotypes, tintypes, cyanotypes, stereopticon images, albumen prints, collodion wet plates; all physical and 'hands-on' methods.[75] Artists David McDermott and Peter McGough, who met in the East Village New York art scene of the 1980s, and until 1995 took the phenomenon to the extreme of reconstructing themselves as Victorian gentlemen, adopting the lifestyle and documenting it and their possessions using vintage cameras and materials, first inspired by their discovery of the cyanotype, and dating their contemporary works in the nineteenth century.[76]

Contemporary

Indigo XII, Kate Cordsen. Cyanotype on handmade paper

Since 2000 around 10 books, and in growing numbers, are published each year in English in which 'cyanotype' appears in the title, compared to only 95 in total from 1843–1999.[77] Though it has been an artform since its inception, the numbers of artists now employing the cyanotype process have burgeoned, and they are not solely photographers. In the book of the 2022 British exhibition Squaring the Circles of Confusion: Neo-Pictorialism in the 21st Century eight contemporary artists: Takashi Arai, Céline Bodin, Susan Derges, David George, Joy Gregory, Tom Hunter, Ian Phillips-McLaren and Spencer Rowell employ the craft of photography for postmodern purpose, including the cyanotype.[78]

International

Many were included in the first American international survey of the cyanotype in 2016; the Worcester Art Museum’s Cyanotypes: Photography's Blue Period[46] which displayed uses of the medium that extend well beyond the utilitarian contact-printing of negatives; Annie Lopez stitched together cyanotypes printed on tamale paper to create dresses; Brooke Williams tea-toned her cyanotypes, adjusting their color to accord with her story as a Jamaican American woman; and Hugh Scott-Douglas experimented with photograms and abstraction.

In 2018, the New York Public Library exhibited the work of nineteen contemporary artists who employ the medium. Mounted 175 years after Anna Atkin's first book of cyanotypes, British Algae, the exhibition was titled Anna Atkins Refracted: Contemporary Works.[79]

Amongst others currently working in, or with, cyanotype are;

United States

Christian Marclay who suggests musical scores in his grids of cassette tapes or their unspooling.

Kate Cordsen applies Japanese aesthetics and non-Cartesian perspective in her mural-scale cyanotype landscapes.

Betty Hahn was early to incorporate cyanotype with other art media including hand-painting with embroidery as a feminist statement[80]

Meghann Riepenhoff reprises Anna Atkins by exposing her prepared papers underneath the waves, so light filters through moving sand, shells, and water currents.[46]

Frederick Hurd prints multiple images and photograms in cyanotype on canvas. [81]

Australia

Australian Todd McMillan draws on the Romantic idea of the sublime, and in his series Equivalents refers specifically to Alfred Steiglitz’ series of black and white imagery of that name produced between 1925 and 1934. McMillan chooses to use the cyanotype to produce images that one might mistake for full colour, but which actually renders both the sky and the clouds a monochrome blue tone.

Canada

Canadian Erin Shirreff translates her sculptural interests into large-scale cyanotype photograms of temporary three-dimensional compositions in her studio with hours-long exposures during which component forms are moved, added or subtracted for transparent effect.[82]

Germany

German artist Marco Breuer abrades cyanotype prints on watercolour paper in representations of the passing of time. Likewise Katja Liebmann, also German, creates “etchings of time” by revisiting negatives to bring together yesterday and today, using cyanotype and other low tech painterly photographic processes, is able to “develop time like a picture” for “memories are malleable and recollection changes with time”.

Iceland

Icelandic artist and filmmaker Inga Lísa Middleton employs the cyanotype for nostalgic representations of her homeland, and as a symbolic colour in imagery alerting audiences to an emerging catastrophe in the marine environment.

Netherlands

Dutch artist Jan van Leeuwen was born in 1932. His self-portraits evoke the memory and trauma of Nazi occupation of Amsterdam during World War Two. He exposes sheets of silver-gelatin paper in a vintage portrait-studio view camera and they become the negatives for his cyanotypes.[83]

United Kingdom

British-born American resident Walead Beshty's Barbican Art Gallery installation of 12,000 cyanotype prints traces a visual time line from October 2013 to September 2014 in a work called A Partial Disassembling of an Invention Without a Future: Helter-Skelter and Random Notes in Which the Pulleys and Cogwheels Are Lying Around at Random All Over the Workbench, produced from each object from the artists’ studio being exposed on cyanotype-coated found paper, card or wood.

In 2021, British artist Edd Carr made a music video for Tycho Jones entirely out of cyanotype prints. Each frame was printed as a cyanotype, and then animated together. Carr reports that over 5,000 frames were printed as a cyanotype to create the final video.[84]

Greece

Stefanos Tsakiris with his team, manage to print the largest cyanotype on cotton fabric. Approximately 70 people took poses on a 100meter long, as an evolution movement on coast of Thessaloniki. The final print managed to win the Guinness World Record, as the largest cyanotype.[85][86]

See also

Blueprint

Sepia

Monochrome

Film tinting

Spirit duplicator

Mimeograph

Duotone

  • Condition: Used
  • Condition: Good to very good. See description.
  • Image Orientation: Landscape
  • Size: 8 x 10 in
  • Date of Creation: 1920-1929
  • Image Color: Black & White
  • Region of Origin: US
  • Original/Licensed Reprint: Original
  • Subject: Historical
  • Vintage: Yes
  • Size Type/Largest Dimension: Medium
  • Listed By: Dealer or Reseller
  • Type: Photograph
  • Year of Production: 1925
  • Theme: Advertising, Americana, Domestic & Family Life, Food & Drink, History, Social History, Transportation
  • Time Period Manufactured: 1925-1949
  • Country/Region of Manufacture: United States
  • Production Technique: Cyanotype

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