A Blue Idyll. Cyanotypes and Dreams showcases Brenton Hamilton’s mastery and imagination across an array of methodologies in nineteenth-century photographic processes.

Brenton Hamilton’s work is inspired by the 19th century and has become a principal area of research and inspiration both as a historian and a printmaker. He concentrates on historic processes employing XIX century photography techniques, such as gum bichromate forms, platinum, collodion ambrotypes on black glass, French variants of paper calotype and the embellished cyanotype.
Influenced by the Surrealist motifs; coaxing dreamlike, chance collisions of fragments from art history, Hamilton shapes a new landscape in his photographs by combining human anatomy, astronomy and botanical imagery to create intriguing and provocative arrangements. His images reference to ancient Greece and Rome, as well as 15th and 16th century Dutch and Italian paintings but Benton Hamilton uses symbols and visual elements from the history of art to create a thoroughly contemporary vision.

Combining chance motifs and interactions from art history, Hamilton creates a new world of unusual connections and possibilities. Cyanotype is an apt process for such otherworldly visualizations in dreamy, deep Prussian blues. The idea of a “dream book” is enforced throughout the book’s sequence of images, as the work presented does not follow any strict chronological order by dates created. This structure enforces the idea of moving through a dream, where linear logic of order is often defied.


“Among significant influences that I respond to are the study of history and culture – and that has led to my ‘re-enactments’ on paper and glass. I have fashioned references to the artist’s studio, early diagrams and engravings of human anatomy, bird study and astronomy. The history of collecting and early museums that were called Wunderkammer have been especially powerful for me. These small, serious rooms were filled with bones and shells, engravings, fragments and casts, and semi- precious stones; drawers full of human knowledge!
In the pictures that I conjure up, the viewer is presented and sees an invented world. Animal bodies and human features, torsos surrounded by stars, or a studio still life of an unusual object emerging from blackness. I hope this work makes a space for the viewer to behold a new precipice.”
- Breton Hamilton