Gathering information in the form of scientific collecting is a remarkable experience that connects us with our surroundings. The inquiry that follows, however, is intimately embedded in the culture of the scientist and collector. How do we ‘see’ data and specimens is as much an impersonal scientific endeavor as a culturally dependent task. Museums pretend to dictate cannon and dogma of truth and yet as time passes the samples become more valuable as records of a certain cultural gaze than as simple examples of a type. Museums of natural and medical history are perhaps the best example of this transformation, in which the resonance of the individual and of a defined lifetime increases with age.
Historical Natures offers a look into the dwellings of collections of natural history from different cities and refers to the reversion of the relationship of type and example, of individual and sample. Historical Natures uses a formal, intimate and serene approach in black and white and color to invite the eye to relish in the exquisite beauty of the juxtaposition of culture and nature, of vessel and trace.
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