Sun Print Cyanotype Modern

Sun Print - Cyanotype Modern

The cyanotype is a photographic printing process that produces characteristic Prussian blue images on paper or fabric using iron(III) ammonium citrate and potassium ferricyanide chemistry. Invented by Sir John Herschel in 1842, it became the first photographic process widely available to amateurs and scientists alike - its low cost, daylight-only exposure requirement, and household chemistry made it genuinely accessible a full century before the Instamatic camera democratized consumer photography.

Anna Atkins and the First Photobook

Anna Atkins was the most significant early practitioner. Her British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions (1843-1853) is universally recognized as the first book illustrated with photographs. Atkins placed dried algae specimens directly on cyanotype-coated paper and exposed them in sunlight, producing white silhouettes of the specimens on a deep Prussian blue ground. She produced approximately 17 copies of the book by hand, distributing them to scientific institutions. A complete copy sold at Christie's in 2018 for £562,500.

The cyanotype was widely used for technical reproduction through the 19th and early 20th centuries - the blueprint in engineering and architecture was a cyanotype process applied to technical drawings, producing the white-on-blue plans that named the entire category of technical reproduction. Cyanotype blueprinting remained in industrial use until electrostatic copying replaced it in the 1960s-1970s.

Contemporary Practice and Sun Print Kits

The modern cyanotype revival runs on two parallel tracks. Fine art practitioners including Mike Ware (who developed the New Cyanotype formula in 1994, producing richer tones and better archival stability), Christina Z. Anderson, and Sandy King push the process's art-historical limits with large-format negatives, toning with black tea or coffee, and combination with other alternative processes.

The mass-market track runs through the Jacquard Sun Print kit (first widely available in the 1990s), sold in museum shops and education suppliers worldwide as a simple daylight exposure experiment. Sun print paper is pre-sensitized cyanotype paper for children and casual users, requiring only object placement, sunlight exposure, and water development. Thousands of school programs use it annually for science-art integration. The "sun print" term is primarily associated with this kit-chemistry variant.

Toning and Variation

Undiluted classic cyanotype produces Prussian blue (#003153 approximately). Toning in black tea, tannic acid, or coffee shifts the Prussian blue toward brown-gray and black; sodium carbonate bleaches it toward ivory before re-developing; gold chloride toning shifts it toward warm gray. Fabric cyanotype (Prochem cyanotype formula on cotton, silk, or linen) is the dominant textile variant, used in fashion, quilt making, and surface design.