World Cyanotype Day puts a free sun-print workshop on the Ijams Park plaza
The Big Camera brings the oldest blue photographic process to the plaza for three hours Saturday. You lay a leaf on treated cloth, the sun does the exposure, and you take the print home.
- When
- Sat Sep 26 · noon – 3 PM
- Where
- The plaza at Ijams Park · 2915 Island Home Ave
- Cost
- Free · reserve a $0 ticket so they know you're coming
- Who
- The Big Camera, with Ijams Park
- The process
- Objects or leaves on light-sensitive fabric, exposed to the sun, rinsed in water
- Weather
- Sunny, high near 77 — which is the one ingredient they can't supply
World Cyanotype Day falls on the last Saturday of September every year, and this year The Big Camera is marking it on the plaza at Ijams Park with a free community workshop from noon to three. Cyanotype is a printing process from the earliest days of photography: you lay an object — a fern, a feather, a set of keys — on fabric treated with a light-sensitive solution, leave it in the sun, and rinse it in water. What comes out is a white silhouette on Prussian blue.
Why it belongs in a park
The process was popularized by Anna Atkins, who in the 1840s used it to make what is considered the first book illustrated with photographs — a catalog of British algae, pressed straight onto the treated sheets. Doing it at Ijams Park means the subjects are on the ground around you. Bring nothing; pick up a leaf on the walk in from the lot. Saturday's forecast is full sun, which is the whole method.
It is free, but the park asks you to reserve a ticket at no charge so they can plan the fabric. It runs alongside the stained-glass workshop and the possum meet-and-greet, so a Saturday at the park can be built entirely out of things you make or meet.
