The Image as Unstable Constellation: Rethinking Darwin's Diagram from the Perspective of Practice-led Iconic Research

Abstract

The visual process is formed by a broad variety of choices that reach from material aspects, such as the selection of the tool or the support material, to a multiplicity of formal, organizational, and aesthetic decisions. The variance of possibilities is sheerly infinite. The knowledge about and the practical experience of these options are at the very core of a particular manner of looking at images, which can be described as a way of understanding them in respect to their potentiality. Under this perspective, images can no longer be seen as one indivisible and homogeneous entity, but as a flexible constellation resulting from individual choices. Through this approach, paired with the methodology of practice-led iconic research, questions about the process and the decisions that drove the image towards its final appearance are allowed to arise. This article will show, using as an example the famous diagram that Charles Darwin drew in 1837 into his sketchbook, how a different understanding of images, can allow us to uncover new insights on the intrinsic meaning of the diagram itself.