ABSTRACT
Cameraless photography at its point of origin in the 19th century was intimately connected to natural history and early experiments sought to record botanical specimens for scientific purposes. Botanist Anna Atkins reclaimed the shoreline as a site of scientific investigation through her work, British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions. This chapter uses Anna Atkins’s work as a point of departure to discuss camera-less photography as a method for investigating the water’s edge, a means of recording the dynamic flux and exchange of materials that characterize the littoral zone.
Examples include a selection of work in cyanotype by MLA students at the University of Texas at Austin. The work of Anna Atkins, William Henry Fox Talbot and the contemporary photographer Meghan Riepenhoff will also be referenced.
