Anna Atkins' 'Photographs of British Algae' - enlarged, and Glasgow Engineering Blueprints

Glasgow Museums own a copy of Anna Atkins' famous 1842 Photographs of British Algae. Therse were originaly printed as cyanotypes (blueprints), as contact prints of the actual algae.  Atkins' family friend Sir John Hershel actually discovered the light sensitive properties of the chemicals used to sensitize the paper on which the prints were made. Atkins was the first to use the process.

GMRC allowed Harry Magee and me to make cyanotype-printed enlargements from scans, made by them, of the originals; we digitally enlarged the scans to make inkjet transparencies which could be contact printed on to water colour paper senstized with Herschel's formula.  Our prints were typically 37 x 50 cms (w x h) compared to the original book page size of 25 x 35

So the prints made are true 'Afters' of the originals. The main reason this exercise was possible was that the GMRC copy of the book is no longer bound.  Some of the pages had just returned from an exhibition in the New York Public Library.

Other work shown were engineering drawings, again printed as cyanotypes, but this time at the original size.  The 'Big Loco', the Type 15F steam engine was built in 1946 by the North British Locomotive Co for the South African Railways; it's better known as the Blue Train which travelled  between Cape Town and Johannesburgh.  The original drawings - in two sheets - courtesy of the Glasgow University Archive,  were scanned and then joined by us in Phototoshop to create a 1.9m wide image which was contact-printed on to sensitized paper from a large roll. The drawing of the locomotive's tender was also scanned; the 'joined-up locomotive and its tender were over 3m wide when hung.

Foe detail of all the work hung in the foyer of Trongate 103 - the first show to be hung there - get a copy of the blueprint catalogue from its pubishers, Glasgow Print Studio in conjunction with Street Level Photoworks.