By Elin Spring
Feeling blue? Along a passageway deep in Boston’s Lafayette City Center, you can immerse yourself in the serene blue hues of innovative contemporary cyanotypes and liberate yourself from the shifting tides of current events. Six artists explore elements from the natural world utilizing classic and inventive expressions of this ancient camera-less photographic technique. Julia Whitney Barnes, Sally Chapman, Anna Leigh Clem, Cynthia Katz, Bryan Whitney and Brett Day Windham are featured in “Elemental Blues: Contemporary Cyanotypes,” on view at the Griffin Museum Gallery in Downtown Crossing through June 30th, 2025. NOTE: Online artist panel discussions are scheduled for TOMORROW NIGHT! May 21st and again on May 28th.
Feature Image: “Aqualife II (Purple)” 2024, Cyanotype, Watercolor & Pen on Strathmore Hot Press, by Brett Day Windham, courtesy of the artist and Griffin Museum of Photography.
Brett Day Windham’s painted cyanotypes of fan corals are fanciful and suggestive. Recognizable as undersea wonders, they can also be interpreted as cerebral connections, arterial branches or a variety of viewer-imagined shapes. In a seesaw of intention and intuition, Windham imparts a contemporary flair to the ancient cyanotype technique by applying “natural and unnatural colors” to her pictures so they “drift in and out of reality.”
“Hummingbird Moons” 2022, from the series Planting Utopia by Julia Whitney Barnes, courtesy of the artist and Griffin Museum of Photography.
Julia Whitney Barnes’ Planting Utopia series is created from over 150 plants in the herb garden at Shaker Heritage Society, site of the Shakers’ first settlement in the United States in Albany, NY. Reflecting the Shakers’ seed and medicinal herb industries, Barnes arranges her geometric compositions based on 19th century Shaker Gift Drawings, “complex, divinely inspired revelations of spiritual perfection, often symmetrical and incorporating botanical elements.” Painting each cyanotype with multiple layers of watercolor, ink, acrylic and gouache, she ingrains historic elements and techniques into her “windows into different worlds.”
“Living in the Bubble #3” 2020, Cyanotype and Pastel on Paper by Sally Chapman, courtesy of the artist and Griffin Museum of Photography.
While not officially part of the “natural world,” the objects that populate Sally Chapman’s cyanotype arrangements in her series Living in the Bubble were sourced from her confined “natural environment” during the Covid pandemic. After decades working as a ceramicist, Chapman has relished the hands-on processes in making her flowing, playful collections including both precious and mundane “stuff.” Just as her oil pastel lines give a colorful contrast to the blues of cyanotypes, the solid objects in her ghostly images emphasize the contrast between materiality and the ephemeral nature of life.
“Teeth Grow in the Heathland: White Birch Leaf” 2024, Toned Cyanotype on Sumi-e-Paper from the series Dreamland, by Anna Leigh Clem, courtesy of the artist and Griffin Museum of Photography.
In her series Dreamland, Anna Leigh Clem creates reverent nature photographs made along the barren, unexploited, and ecologically diverse shores of Canada’s Prince Edward Island. After scanning digital negatives from which she creates cyanotype prints, she tones them with locally-sourced plant matter like strawberry leaves. Incorporating both natural fecundity and demise, along with signs of animal life and remains, Clem’s strangely toned cyanotypes appear at once real and surreal, detailed and mysterious, subtly accenting the tenuous balance between life and death.
“Red, White and Very Blue” 2023, Cyanotype and Thread on Paper, by Cynthia Katz, courtesy of the artist and Griffin Museum of Photography.
Most recently renowned for her delightful cyanotype grids, Cynthia Katz includes photographs from three different series in this exhibit. A self-described news junkie, her latest work hints at her distress over issues like immigration and “the way that the flag has become weaponized, but also the way our country has been divided and polarized, which makes me really sad.” Her political content is inconspicuous (if you don’t know, now you know) and most of her work remains rooted in the realms of plants and family. Nonetheless, Katz’s imagery is stoked with multi-layered meanings, elevating her spirited cyanotypes into mesmerizing abstractions.
“Iris” 2024, X-ray Cyanotype by Bryan Whitney, courtesy of the artist and Griffin Museum of Photography.
Bryan Whitney employs x-ray technology to create his exquisite botanical cyanotypes, allowing us to envision the hidden interiors of familiar plants. Each isolated flower seems to embody purity and truth. While the scientific precision and luminous clarity of Whitney’s photographs are enthralling, they become even more spellbinding when considering their metaphoric possibilities.
NOTE: The Griffin Museum will be hosting two ONLINE artist panel discussions for this exhibit:
Artist Panel I: May 21, 2025 • 7pm – 8:30pm
Featuring Anna Leigh Clem, Julia Whitney Barnes and Sally Chapman
Artist Panel II: May 28, 2025 • 7pm – 8:30pm
Featuring Bryan Whitney, Brett Windham and Cynthia Katz
For more information about this exhibit and associated programming, go to: https://griffinmuseum.org/show/elemental-blues-contemporary-cyanotypes/
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