Annabel Dover

Annabel Dover borrows methodologies from Victorian craft, science and storytelling to explore personal relationships and hidden stories, mediated through the documentation of nature. She has revived cyanotype printing, a technique developed by Anna Atkins in the 1850s, when it became a craze with women of that era.

Dover's Weed series is from plants collected in Emma Darwin's garden at Down House, the Kent home of the naturalist Chales Darwin and his family. Darwin was particularly interested in how weeds developed and survived and created his own weed bed, which he dug into his otherwise pristine lawn. More to the point many different species of weeds border the path to Charles Darwin's greenhouse, but unlike the other plants in the garden of Down House they were planted for beauty. Dover utilised the wild foliage growing in these precincts when she created her stunning cyanotypes.