Words and Images by John Wreford

Standing in the cold lifeless air of Westminster Abbey, surrounded by marble morbidity, the good and great and privileged interred at every turn, monarchs at the head of the table and poets consigned to a dim corner. And there, amid the flag stones of the nave lie the mortal remains of Charles Darwin, a three lined epitaph for the founder of the theory of modern evolution. We need little explanation of who he is or what he contributed, your attention soon wanders, you glance at the neighbouring grave, so close they could be related, the Latin inscription reveals little and you could be forgiven for wandering off in search of dead poets and princesses.

The obscure tomb suspiciously close to that of Darwin’s is that of Sir John Herschel, astronomer, biologist, chemist, and mathematician. He was a mentor and source of inspiration for Darwin. Herschel came from good stock, his father discovered Uranus, and the family’s contribution to astronomy is immeasurable. Sir John married his cousin and had twelve children, he was a Polymath.

When we consider the origins and invention of photography it’s usually Henry Fox Talbot and Louis Daguerre that spring to mind but John Frederick William Herschel is as, if not more important. Herschel gave us the term photography and gave us the photographic meaning of negative and positive. It was his discovery of using sodium thiosulphate as a solvent for silver halides, producing what we know as fixer or hypo, which allowed Henry Fox Talbot and Louis Daguerre to make permanent the images they were creating in those heady days of the mid-nineteenth century.

Importantly Herschel invented the Cyanotype, the process that gave us blueprints used primarily for technical drawing. A simple process of using a combination of iron compound coated paper being exposed to UV light then washed. Sir John introduced family friend and fellow botanist Anna Atkins to the process and she created a series of the most beautiful images of algae and other plants. She is regarded as the first female photographer and produced the first-ever book of photographs.

Anna Atkins is a truly remarkable woman; her groundbreaking photography was more than just an exercise in the ascetic, it was a combination of her botanical scientific study, technical ability, and determination, but it is her love of the subject that make her simple blue and white images as beautiful today as they were a century and a half ago.

During the first Covid confinement I decided it was time to experiment with Cyanotypes as part of my slow photography movement, probably not the same buzz in the Home Counties as that of the antics of Hershel and Atkins but never the less.

There really is no explanation for the creative process, I can only say that from time to time I find myself crawling around graveyards, is it the arrogance of being alive amongst the dead or a sense of my own mortality, I don’t know. I decided to collect the fallen leaves from the graves I found interesting and have them squirreled away.

The Leaves of Poets had been a title jangling around my head for a while and with the pandemic pending I had to use what was easily at hand, so this first attempt has been made with leaves found on the grave of JRR Tolkien, and I do think one image in particular has an air of Middle Earth about it.

Leaves that have so many symbolic meanings are great subjects but not the easiest when working with Cyanotype or Lumen printing, the translucence of petals does work better, so you sit there in the mud contemplating the shapes of shedded shade. It’s all part of the mindful approach to slow photography.

Creating Cyanotypes is a simple process, you can buy raw chemicals but with the growing popularity of cameraless photography, kits are easily available online. You don’t need a darkroom or much in the way of photographic experience. I will prepare a PDF of full instructions of Cyanotype and Lumen printing and include a resource of further reading, leave a message in the comments section below or mail me.

As I went in search of the unsung heroes of the origins of photography, a rabbit hole of revelation if ever there was one, I discovered the Herschel family home is in the same village as my late grandparents lived; Hawkhurst in Kent, just behind the Eight Bells pub where one night in my early twenties I got incredibly drunk with my Grandfather. The pub dates back to 1847 so there is every chance Sir John popped in for a cheeky pint, our paths missing by about a hundred and fifty years. And while we are on the people I have not met in pubs topic; both JRR Tolkien and I were regulars in the Eagle and Child pub in Oxford, although sadly, not at the same time.  

Mindfulness, slow photography, and adventures with analog are all therapeutic experiments I will be pursuing more often and will be happy to help anyone else attempting similar projects and let me know if you are interested in a cheat sheet on getting started with Cyanotypes. 

John Wreford is a freelance professional photographer based in Istanbul. Specializing in images of the Middle East & Balkans; For ten years I lived in Damascus, Syria where I watched a beautiful country slip into a vile war. I find art, in one form or another to be the answer to everything. My life now is about telling stories of the human condition, the good the bad and the beautiful. More recently I have returned to analogue and historical photographic processes as a medium to help share those stories.

See/read more at John Wreford Photographer and on Instagram at johnwreford.