Ákos Czigány, In viaggio con Darwin

curated by Gigliola Foschi

(Travelling with Charles Darwin)

After circumnavigating the globe aboard HMS Beagle and conducting his extensive field research during his voyage, the celebrated naturalist Charles Darwin wrote On the Origin of Species (1859), a revolutionary text that was the first to set out the theory of evolution by natural selection.

With his Darwin online series (2009-2010), the Hungarian photographer Ákos Czigány pays tribute to this great scientist and his grandfather Erasmus Darwin, the author of the set of poems entitled The Botanic Garden (1789-91) and ahead of his time in his support for evolutionist ideas.

Czigány creates a grid composition, reproducing only the blank pages from the early editions of Darwin’s books, sourced from the Internet. Neatly arranged one beside the other, when seen from a distance these pages look like abstract artworks, or evanescent mosaics made up of almost identical sheets, while from close up they reveal the marks of time and the traces of drawings and texts filtering through from the reverse side of each page.