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Proserpina 1, 2009. Cynotype, 25 x 32 cm.
The Scottish artist Alexander Hamilton has spent more than forty years using photograms to record stunning images of plants such as this crocus, which is shown complete with its root system. In his cynotype process, Hamilton places plants and flowers on light-sensitive paper and exposes them to light, before the image is fixed using the 'blueprint' technique devised by the astronomer Sir Herschel in the mid-nineteenth century, which used the insoluble Prussian blue dye that gave the process its name ('cyan' comes from the Greek for 'dark blue').