Prodger - Darwins Camera: Art and Photography in the Theory of Evolution

DARWINS CAMERA

ART AND PHOTOGRAPHY IN THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION

PHILLIP PRODGER

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Prodger, Phillip.
Darwins camera : art and photography in the theory of evolution/
Phillip Prodger.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-19-515031-5
1. Darwin, Charles, 18091882. Illustrations. 2. Darwin, Charles,
18091882 Art collections. I. Title.
QH365.Z9P76 2009
704.9495 dc22 2008033854

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper

LO, here a CAMERA OBSCURA is presented to thy view, in which are lights and shades dancing on a whited canvas, and magnified into apparent life! if thou art perfectly at leisure for such trivial amusement, walk in and view the wonders of my ENCHANTED GARDEN.

ERASMUS DARWIN, The Botanic Garden

The prints, drawings, and photographs Darwin collected in the 1860s and 1870s

Strategies Darwin used in illustrating his books

Darwins knowledge of art history and use of illustration in his books

How passion manuals informed Darwins research

Connections between photography and biology in the 1860s

How photography in mental hospitals influenced Darwin

Darwins quest for pictures of expressive babies

The artists who guided Darwins search for pictures

Oscar Rejlander, Darwins favorite photographer

Posing for Darwins pictures

The aftermath of Darwins experiments

THIS BOOK BUILDS on the achievements of the Darwin industry, that large international community of scholars who have dedicated themselves to studying Charles Darwins life and work. Darwin is an intriguing subject, and not just because his theories were important and controversial. He wrote letters to nearly everyone he knew, kept copies of virtually all incoming and outgoing correspondence, and made organized notes about his ideas as they developed. So he is not just an extremely interesting scientist, he is also an ideal test case for how scientific theories developed and spread in Victorian England.

In 1948, largely as a result of the efforts of his son Francis, the majority of Charles Darwins archive was transferred to Cambridge University Library, where it is currently held in the librarys department of manuscripts. Although many interesting items are scattered in other locations there are smaller concentrations, for example, at Darwins last home, Down House, in Downe, Kent, and at the John Murray Archive in London the material at Cambridge is authoritative. Cambridge boasts approximately 9,000 of the 14,500 known letters sent to and from Darwin in his lifetime, as well as his notebooks, nearly all of his personal library, and numerous related items such as handwritten manuscripts, edited proofs, newspaper clippings, and even a handful of specimens from the Beagle voyage.

The Cambridge archive also includes an amazing collection of original photographs, drawings, watercolors, and prints commissioned, collected, and in some cases even drawn by Darwin, which are the heart of this book. Most are kept in posthumously bound albums, where they roughly reflect the order in which Darwin organized them (figure P-1). A Herculean project to catalogue and transcribe the letters in the archive, called the Darwin Correspondence Project, began in 1974 and is ongoing. There is an enormous amount of work to do transcribing, checking, and cross-checking. As of this printing, the project has published bound transcriptions of all known letters through 1867 and has made most other letters available online. At the time I performed the research for this book, the letters from the late 1860s and early 1870s, when Darwin began to look seriously at art and photography, had not been published. The Darwin Correspondence Project team was an enormous help in my research, sharing early drafts of key letters and pointing out interesting connections. Nevertheless, because published versions of most relevant letters did not exist, the transcriptions contained herein, unless specifically noted, are my own. I should also note that the Darwin Correspondence Project has for the time being set aside visual material such as prints, drawings, and photographs for later study. As a result, all identifications of artists, titles, dates, and media are also my own.