GIVE US YOUR SUGGESTIONS & FEEDBACK ABOUT THE SITE
We will send you an E-mail every time there is a new article in your favorite section. Sign-Up For ALERTS.

Photo Book Reviews

Blue Prints, The Natural World in Cyanotype Photographs (Rizzoli) - by Zeva Oelbaum Reviewed by Danielle Wolffe Photographer Zeva Oelbaum found a new means of expression by utilizing an old technique - the cyanotype image.  The resulting publication showcases over ninety pages of striking blue images of plants and animals that are sure to show you nature in a new light. Article rating: 5.25

Zeva Oelbaum scratched the earth of photographic history and dug up the cyanotype technique, popularized by 19th century botanist Anna Atkins, whose pioneering collection British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions was the first book ever to be illustrated exclusively through photography. Drawing inspiration from Atkins, and her 400 stunning impressions of plant specimens bled into blue pages through the interaction of sunlight and iron salts, Oelbaum created her second collection of photography Blue Prints: The Natural World in Cyanotype Photographs.

Atkins created the cyanotype images—which she called shadowgraphs and later became known as blueprints—through a chemical formula found by astronomer Sir John Herschel in 1842, the year before her book was published. The method that she used has remained largely unchanged since its discovery.

Oelbaum found working with the cyanotype technique to be a liberating artistic experience.

“Released from any obligation to reproduce details, I started to explore the interactions of shapes both formal and organic. As the objects became less precise, I became freer to interpret them,” Oelbaum writes in the introduction to Blue Prints.

The body of work contained in the 90-page collection is liberating for the viewer
as well. Blue Prints may be the perfect anecdote for the visual over stimulation of our modern age. The pure beauty of each natural object found in the photographs combine with their haunting blue tones to provide a place for the eye to rest for a while, for the spirit to linger.

The photographs provide the perfect backdrop for the imagination. Details rubbed out through the medium allow us to imagine what once was. At the same time details that may have gone unnoticed are highlighted.  Blue nasturtium leaves spread across a stark white page. There are no flowers, no roots. Yet the leaves are as fine as tissue, blue veins criss-cross like lifelines, and the intimacy with which they seem to be leaning on each other us unexpected. Two seahorses facing each other, parts of their bellies seem blighted. Yet there is something in the angle of their posture, in the knobby spine of their bodies that is striking. Part of a rattlesnakes skin, the crimp of its tail is mean, yet its translucence gives it an odd fragility.

The objects have been plucked from their context. Not bound to any real place or time of day, the blue that the objects are steeped in provide the only real clues to their origins. Blue may appear to be coming from smoke from a chimney in a city, or shadow from a dense copse of trees; it may appear to be illuminated by the moonlight or darkened by its depth under the ocean . The color rich and shrouded in mystery helps us to glimpse many possible habitats and conditions for the creatures in the book.

Oelbaum uses repetition to suggest changes throughout much of the body of work. On the page marked Dragonfly, four images of Dragonflies are clustered together. Viewed alone, the translucence of each set of wings are certainly beautiful. Viewing four insects together, the way the dappled light plays on the distinct patterns scored on each wing, the way the wings are touching each other, gives them an almost ethereal quality. The insects appear to have been reborn.

The specimens gathered for this collection tug at our heartstrings simply by their place in our world. Oelbaum honors their nature by delicately sculpting them for us and arranging them in unexpected ways to help us to see deeper into the core of their nature.

^ Back to top

* Your Name:
* Email address:
	(Enter the code shown)
	(Your e-mail address will not show on the site and is used so that we can contact you back if needed)
* Your Comment about this article::
	Include me in the TGP Monthly Newsletter