Codex Natura
I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars,
And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg of the wren,
And the tree-toad is a chef-d'oeuvre for the highest,
And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven,
And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery,
And the cow crunching with depress'd head surpasses any statue,
And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels.
- Walt Whitman, Song of Myself
Stars created the raw materials for our solar system in their crucibles of temperature and pressure, and when those stars exploded billions of years ago, they scattered themselves across the galaxy and created the ingredients for life, and indeed everything, on our planet. Everything on Earth is thus connected at an atomic level, all deriving from the same sources within the universe.
It is this interconnection that I explore in my Codex Natura project as I photograph a wide variety of natural objects, seeking photographs that show commonalities and patterns evocative of the shared interstellar origin of everything on Earth.
Thinkers ranging from Aristotle to Galileo embraced the concept of a Book of Nature, or Codex Natura, as a metaphorical expression of the natural world, believing that a systematic and scientific study of all forms of nature, and one that rejected mysticism and religion, would yield explanations for natural processes and phenomenons.
