In the Academy’s Library & Archives, Photographs of Medicinal, Economic, and Interesting Plants from Natural Living Specimens, Indigenous and Introduced (1896) is just one example of a bound manuscript containing cyanotypes. Created by photographer, chemist and botanist Charles L. Lochman, it contains 220 cyanotype prints made from glass plate negatives of plants and includes their scientific and common names.
First developed in 1842, cyanotypes are contact prints on paper that have been “sensitized” using a combination of iron salts. When exposed to natural or artificial ultraviolet light, the process produces a high contrast blue image, at low costs and without the need for a darkroom.
Anna Atkins, an English botanist used cyanotype photograms in her work, Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions (1843) and is widely regarded as the first photographic illustrated book. During the 19th century, cyanotypes became a recurring feature in botanical and other scientific texts. Cyanotypes also became widely used by architects and engineers to create copies of plans — hence the term blueprint.
Local Interest
It took Lochman 15 years to compile and assemble this manuscript before gifting it to the Academy in December 1896. Although the bulk of the plants pictured in his work are native to the northeastern United States, Lochman also imported seeds and roots that were grown in his botanical garden at his home in Bethlehem, PA in order to photograph them.
A cyanotype print of Sanguinaria canadensis from his title is one example. Also known as bloodroot, bloodwort and red puccoon, it is a native plant to eastern North America. Commonly found in woodlands around the Philadelphia area, it flowers briefly in the early spring with a delicate white or pink blossom around a golden center, growing close to the ground.
According to the Native American Ethnobotany Database — a resource of plants used as drugs, foods, dyes, fibers by native Peoples of North America — many Native American groups, including the Meskwaki, Haudenosaunee and Omaha, used bloodroot as a dye. The roots also served medicinal purposes, such as an emetic (to induce vomiting), gastrointestinal aid, tuberculosis remedy and dermatological treatment for cuts, sores and poison ivy.
However, much of this Indigenous knowledge and information was missing from the written content, and therefore the searchable archival metadata, of Lochman’s work.
Repair and Restore
Like the holdings of many other natural history museums, the Academy’s Library & Archives’ collections reflect colonial, misogynistic practices. As part of an institutional effort to engage in strategies to describe its collections in a manner that is respectful to the individuals and groups who create, use and are represented within them, the Academy’s Brooke Dolan Archivist Jessica Lydon is working to create documentation and establish workflows for reparative descriptive practices that are specific and appropriate for an archives with natural and environmental science collections.
One aspect of reparative description, also known as conscious editing, involves revising existing publicly accessible description or catalog records for archival materials to redress problematic, derogatory, euphemistic or overly laudatory language in collection and item descriptions. This also includes addressing absence or erasure where possible, under-description, and distortion of documentation involving gender, indigenous cultures, race, ethnicity and nationality and other subject areas.
The recently reprocessed and redescribed Charles L. Lochman Papers serve as one example of this type of work. Previously, the catalog record for the collection, acquired in two separate lots and more than 110 years apart (1896 and 2010), provided limited information as to the contents of the collection and the subject matter beyond that it contains cyanotypes of plants.
Now, through extensive revisions to the description including the addition of controlled subject headings, the catalog record more accurately reflects the breadth of material in the collection and acknowledges the geographical localities and subject matter represented in the records, including the pictorial representation of plants traditionally used by Native Americans as medicines and other uses.
“Reparative descriptive work is an iterative and reflective process,” explains Lydon. “This is ongoing work that will allow the Academy’s Library & Archives to examine how it keeps and preserves records by revisiting, reevaluating or contextualizing outdated or harmful language, as well as biases, in archival description.”
Ultimately, the goal of Lydon’s work, and those in and across the institution, is to make the Academy’s archives and collections more accessible, discoverable and usable to all the communities it serves.
You can support the Academy’s research efforts to understand the natural world and inspire everyone to care for it by becoming a member or donating to our Library & Archives.
Tú también puedes apoyar los proyectos de investigación de la Academia, y así ayudar a entender y proteger la riqueza natural convirtiéndote en miembro o haciendo una donación a nuestras la Biblioteca.