Untitled
1974
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
cyanotype
Dimensions
image/sheet: 55 × 75.5 cm (21 5/8 × 29 3/4 in.)
Classification
Photograph
Department
CPH
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Corcoran Collection (Gift of Joshua P. Smith)
Accession Number
2015.19.4935
Art Historical Context
Barbara Kasten's *Untitled* (1974) is a striking example of early experimental photography, created using the cyanotype process—a 19th-century technique that yields vivid Prussian blue images. This cameraless method, pioneered by Sir John Herschel 1840, involves paper with light-sensitive chemicals and exposing it to UV light through objects or transparencies, resulting in ethereal, blueprint-like abstractions. Kasten's large-scale work (55 × 75.5 cm) captures the medium's poetic potential, now preserved in the National Gallery of Art's Corcoran Collection (Gift of Joshua P. Smith). In the 19...