One of the oldest methods of making photographic prints is still popular with artists today. Tejal Pandey, Head – Dilip Piramal Art Gallery at the NCPA, discusses what makes cyanotype printmaking relevant and what one can learn from this intriguing process that combines art, science and the imagination.

As serendipity would have it, just days before writing this piece, I came across the work of Paris-based photographer Simon Diebold on a platform that endorses exemplary work by artists from around the world. Diebold’s portraits, striking and surreal, seem to have slipped right out of the realm of dreams, albeit ones with a glitch. As if they were temporarily disturbed, as if one had dropped a glob of paint onto a still wet painting. They also reflect the ambiguity and the mystery that his process seems beholden to. One that draws from a place of not knowing, of creating from instinct and experimentation.

In this respect, making cyanotype prints is no different. Cyanotypes or blueprints, known for their distinctive cyan hue, were first introduced in 1842 by polymath Sir John Herschel. Also known as sun prints, since they involve exposing photo-sensitised paper to sunlight, cyanotypes are true art experiments. One can never be entirely sure of what the print looks like till the very end, when the chemical coating on the surface gets washed away in water and the final image emerges—blue where it was exposed to the sun, and white where objects, images or materials were placed to block out the light.

Soon after Herschel’s invention, artist-illustrator Anna Atkins used the process to create Photographs of British Algae, now considered to be the first photobook ever made. Published in 1843, Atkins made hundreds of cyanotypes of algae, which she claimed were too tiny and intricate to illustrate by hand. Cyanotypes have since endured as a camera-less technique, popular amongst artists to date. One cannot help but wonder what makes this almost two-centuries-old practice relevant in this day and age of instant technology and artificial intelligence. Perhaps it is everything that the creative environment denies artists today—the slowness of working through a process, the luxury of time, the physicality of working with one’s hands and of the prints as tangible artwork, and finally, something that Diebold’s strategy of working employs: the art of learning through trial and error.

Another important artist whose work is centered around chance and accidents that one would generally perceive as mistakes is contemporary visual artist Tacita Dean. Primarily anchored in film/analogue and alternative processes, Dean’s practice embraces the enormous possibilities that the factor of chance offers. Or what errors and glitches might reveal. One realises how crucial this openness to erring is to the whole creative process itself. The final artwork is never a cookie cutter-style product but the culmination of a journey, one with many iterations. Incidentally, Dean’s residency at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles in 2014-15 culminated in ‘Monet Hates Me’, a project best thought of as an ‘exhibition in a box’ where several boxes containing the artwork, including cyanotypes, were on display.

Cyanotypes have had other uses as well. Blueprints, as they are still referred to, were originally cyanotype prints used by architects while laying out construction and design plans. They have also been used to make stamps and bank notes. Just like Atkins’s photobook, these documents adhere to a certain functionality of purpose and not only artistic endeavours. Artists have since proven that they can be both. An example would be Iranian artist Gohar Dashti’s work, whose cyanotypes depict broken fragments of intentionally destroyed material, reflecting memories of growing up in war-torn Iran.

Closer to home, Mumbai-based photographer Hari Katragadda’s works in cyan have documented the environmental pollution caused by tanneries and glue factories around Kanpur and Varanasi. For this project, he dyed cloth and paper in water from the Ganges to make prints. The cyanotype printmaking process involves the use of distilled water so that the resultant colour is a pure, vibrant cyan and the texture is smooth. The muddled colours and textures in Katragadda’s works that used water from the Ganges, revered by millions as pure and holy, stand proof of the existence of toxic chemicals in its water. This is also Katragadda’s way of placing this historically Western practice in an entirely Indian context.

Bangladesh-based photographer Munem Wasif deployed a similar framework for Seeds Shall Set Us Free, a series of cyanotypes displayed as a visually stunning grid of framed prints, which hold layers of connotations. Here, the cyan is more indigo, harking back to the colonial destruction of agricultural land for cash crops, while the rice grains used as objects placed on the prints speak of the Bengal famine, of grains hoarded for British troops instead of food for a starving populace. And yet, the designs formed by the rice grains moving lyrically across his frames denote the alpona or the rangoli—decorative designs made, traditionally with rice paste, outside homes in West Bengal and other parts of the country.

The applications of cyanotypes, like other alternative practices in photography, are endless. This is something that participants explored in depth over two days during ‘Slowing Down and Moving Around’, a workshop held in May at the Dilip Piramal Art Gallery at the NCPA. Led by facilitator Andrea Fernandes, an educator and artist working with photography, the workshop brought together people from diverse backgrounds who created works just as diverse in theme and style. From personal memories to explorations of identity, outer space and the solar system, to landscapes and portraiture, each series was distinct and yet cohesive in its will to experiment and dabble with different techniques and materials.

Encouraged by the results, we felt the need to share these works with a larger audience. Slowing Down and Moving Around: Experiments in Cyan, an exhibition of work emerging from the cyanotype process will open on 10th July. Accompanying the show will be a curated segment of photobooks from the Editions JOJO library, exploring the idea of experimenting with alternate methods of creating art and photographs which aligns well with the core of what the process of making cyanotype prints involves.

This article was originally published in the July 2025 issue of ON Stage.