The exhibition After Humboldt presents a series of works by six contemporary photographers (Manel Armengol, Alberto Baraya, Joan Fontcuberta, Juan Carlos Martínez, Rafael Navarro and Juan Urrios) with a creative and highly novel perspective on the science of botany. The aim is to achieve a convergence of art and science on the same level. Along with the photographers' images, the exhibition also features works from the print archives and collections of Calcografía Nacional, with a selection of original engravings contrasting with the rigorous perspective of photography.
Botany. After Humbolt delicately and unassumingly combines knowledge and experience, both aspects being a vital contribution for an understanding of the historical evolution of the conception of botany in the plastic arts since the Enlightenment.
Botany has always been tied to our knowledge of the surrounding planet, an understanding and recognition of our genuine, changing world. The earliest studies of plants were born out of the need to understand this world, to explore nature in depth. And plants and flowers are the most immediate elements as, given their static nature, they allow us to depict and classify them. From the point at which the first academic decided to record a plant on paper, rather than drying it or freezing it in time like a pinned butterfly, the action of drawing and reproduction marked a step forward from which there was no turning back. From this point onwards the standards were established for a new interpretation of the natural world, but also for the emergence of new artistic genre.
Botany, together with the study of native fauna, provided the motivation for major scientific expeditions, large-scale explorations for the purpose of colonial policy, the expansion of borders, the conquest of new worlds and the domination and economic exploitation this involved.
The arrival of photography led to a major change in botanical science. As a new tool for observation, it cannot be compared with the drawings contained in botanical archives. However, it is through photography that plants and flowers receive a unique treatment, becoming essential themes, and often almost the only subjects of many photographic works. Nature reproduced in a thousand forms divided into two major blocks: reality and fiction. For some photographers, plants and flowers are the most immediate aspect of nature with which they can work. For others this is a territory open to genetic manipulation, deceit and supplantation, given the very slight difference between truth and lies, which can in any event be completely erased by photography.