Google’s Latest Doodle Pays Tribute to Photography Pioneer Anna Atkins

Visitors to Google today are being treated to a Doodle logo replacement that pays tribute to photography pioneer Anna Atkins. Atkins was born 216 years ago today, and in her life she became one of the first — if not the first — women to create a photograph.

The Doodle is inspired by the cyanotype photographs (contact prints) of leaves and algae that Atkins started making a year after her friend John Herschel invented the photographic process in 1842. Click the image on Google and you’ll be taken to the search results for “Anna Atkins”:

After Atkins started using the cyanotype process to image algae, she compiled the work into a book titled Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions in 1843. As we shared last month, the book is considered to be the first book ever to be illustrated exclusively with photographs. Here’s a tour of that first photobook:

Happy birthday, Anna Atkins!