Jaques was a multitalented poet and artist best known as a landscape and botanical printmaker who helped revive etching in the U.S. in the early 20th century. She also created over 1,000 cyanotypes of wildflowers and ferns that, while made as studies for her etchings, are themselves beautiful and accomplished images. This delicate photogram of jimson weed bears an inscription by Jaques on the mount warning of the plant’s poisonous properties.

Jaques had invested much in equipment for her printmaking, including modifying surgical instruments into etching tools and purchasing what was for a while the only etching press in Chicago. By comparison, cyanotypes are straightforward. An object is placed on photo-sensitized paper and exposed to the sun; the deep blue color is a result of a chemical reaction between iron and ferricyanide. Jaques’s photographs recall those of botanist and photographer Anna Atkins, whose Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions (1843) was the first book to be illustrated with photographic images.

—Text taken from the Carter Handbook (2023)