see the snowflakes on the surface. I never believed it, thinking snowflakes were too small for the human eye to see. So, I tripped over a story the other day. The Snowman of Vermont. Wilson Alwyn Bentley, a farmer in the 1880s became fascinated with snowflakes and wrangled a way to photograph them by strapping a microscope to his camera.
Of course, his photomicrographs were considered eccentric, but in later years, his extraordinary collection of exquisite images were bequeathed to the Smithsonian. He once said: “Every crystal was a masterpiece of design and no one design was ever repeated. When a snowflake melted, that design was forever lost.”
These images are all in the public domain, and their crystalline forms are a marvel, even today. When it comes to cyanotypes, I am an admitted obsessive, so can you imagine the fun I had turning these images into digital negatives and then translating into cyanotypes?
It felt like the essence of Christmas. The two images here are digital negative cyanotypes of the the originals, printed on textured watercolour paper.
When the Snowman of Vermont passed away, according to a charming and rather sentimental essay in the Public Domain Review, he was laid to rest in the Jericho Center cemetery. And then, quote, “it began to snow, leaving a dusting over the burial ground.”
I shall never see snowflakes the same way again. And it hadn't been for cyanotypes, I would never have come across this amazing true-life story.