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 the era. Her Weed series is from plants collected in Emma Darwin’s garden at Down House, the Kent home of the naturalist Charles Darwin and his family. The species in Dover’s work border the path to Charles Darwin’s greenhouse, but unlike the other plants in the garden of Down House they were planted for beauty. Darwin was particularly interested in how weeds developed and survived, creating his own weed bed, which he dug into his otherwise pristine lawn. Dover utilised the weeds which grow in these borders when she created her stunning cyanotype.
Renee Pfister, July 2014
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