Physica Curiosa

Ptilota sericea

date: 1843

taken by: Anna Atkins

source: The Public Domain Review

This is a cyanotype, a photography technique invented in 1842 wherein you place an object on a paper coated with iron salts and then expose it to sunlight. This creates a white image on a blue background.

This cyanotype shows the plant "soft feather weed", the scientific name of which has today been changed to Plumaria plumosa. It was made by the English botanist Anna Atkins (1799-1871) and published in "Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions" (1843), often regarded as the first book to ever be illustrated with photographs.

painted peaks; death valley, california

“Never trust the living”

Grave of Antoine Michel Wemaer,  Assebroek Cemetery, Assebroek, Arrondissement Brugge, West Flanders, Belgium,

“I’ll disappear in the fog as a foreigner to all life, as a human island detached from the dream of the sea, as a uselessly existing ship that floats on the surface of everything.”

Jonas Mekas

- As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty

Mural sobre el bar ‘Silueta de Guadalajara de día y de noche’ de Mathias Goeritz, Club de Guadalajara, Guadalajara, Jalisco, México 1950 (destruido)

Portrait of a Young Woman