Susana’s Blues: The Magic of Cyanotype

I first met Susana when she enrolled in the Saturday Experimental Printing course at the London College of Printing (as it was then known), located on what is now the University of the Arts London campus at Elephant and Castle. From the outset, she distinguished herself as a highly perceptive and accomplished photographer. I was particularly struck by her approach to portraiture and her ability to capture the human form and gaze with clarity and authenticity.

Following the conclusion of the course, we remained in contact, along with several other participants who now form the core of the Eyelight Photo Collective.
Together, we have taken part in various group exhibitions in London and across the United Kingdom.

Susana now lives in her native Portugal, where she has developed a refined and deeply considered body of work using one of photography’s most historic processes: the cyanotype. Employing ultraviolet light from the sun, she creates intricate botanical photograms of remarkable delicacy. After development in water, paper coated with a solution of ferric ammonium citrate and potassium ferricyanide yields the distinctive Prussian blue tones that have become synonymous with the medium.

Susana’s Blues—a title that references the unmistakable tonal register of each print—offers an intimate meditation on her immediate environment in Portugal. Immersed in nature in its most unadorned state, the works reveal the elemental structures of plant life with quiet precision. The blueprints of existence: direct, unembellished, and devoid of artifice.
Through the careful rendering of forms that might otherwise be overlooked, Susana invites sustained attention to the fragile ecologies that surround us. At a time when the accelerating effects of climate change place countless species at risk—including our own—these works acquire an added resonance, reminding us of both the beauty and vulnerability of the natural world.