Untitled [Photogram of Plant Specimen]

Bertha Evelyn Jaques began her artistic career as a printmaker after she was inspired by the prints she saw at the 1893 Chicago Columbian Exposition. An active member of the Wild Flowers Preservation Society, Jaques’s subjects were most often plants, and she made cyanotype photograms in addition to traditional prints. She made photograms without a camera by placing objects directly onto sensitized paper and exposing them to light. The rich blue color comes from her use of the cyanotype technique, which takes its name from Greek, meaning “dark blue impression.” Sir John Herschel invented the cyanotype in the 1840s, and it was first used as copying technique for architectural and mechanical drawings, leading to the term “blueprint.” It was not until the 1880s that it became widely used by amateur photographers as a quick and cheap means of producing sample prints from negatives. To create a cyanotype, a piece of paper or cloth is coated with a light-sensitive solution of ferric salt and potassium ferricyanide, exposed to light—in this case, with the fern-like plant on top of it—and rinsed with water to fix the image. In addition to revealing her reverence for commonplace elements of nature and beautifully crafted objects, Jaques’s print is evidence of one of photography’s earliest uses as a means of creating botanic illustrations.