Mandy Barker. GOST Books, (160p) ISBN: 9781915423795. Photography, read 18/06/25, Hardback ★★★★★
I’ve been so looking forward to getting this book as I’ve read about it in several different magazines and newspapers and it has just come at the right time as I’ve been thinking about cyanotypes a lot recently.
I’d also added GOST Books to the list of publishers on the site and they were the inspiration for this new series, Photobook of the Month, where I take a month to choose a photobook and then read and review it on this blog.
Mandy Barker has gone back to basics with her book, going back to the start of the history of photography when people were still deciding how and what was going to be the leading process for photography.
Cyanotype was initially ‘discovered’ by John Herschel in 1842, but it was Anna Atkins who in 1843 produced what is widely seen as the first book fully illustrated with photographs, ‘Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions’ and it is this that has inspired Mandy Barker’s current book, and in her own words:
‘In 2012, I found a piece of material in a rock pool that changed my life. Mistaking this moving piece of cloth for seaweed, started the recovery of synthetic clothing from around the coastline of Britain for the next ten years.’
Each of the 74 plates is an extremely detailed Prussian blueprint using the cyanotype method and the level of detail shown as always stuns me for such a simple technique.
But the overall project is disturbing as these pieces of clothing were found all around the British Isles, in all 200 specimens from 121 beaches were used for the overall project of which this book is a distillation.
I’ve been going back to this book again and again ever since I got it and studying each object and being stunned at their likeness to Anna Atkins original works, stunned by the thought of this amount of debris floating around the oceans from the fast fashion industry, and stunned by the intricacies of each cyanotype.
The book itself is such a beautiful object as well with all the papers being FSC certified, a beautiful red cover which is contrasted with the gold lettering and edging, there are also gorgeous end papers.
I’m really glad I started my exploration of photobooks with this one as it is a fascinating project perfectly presented.
