This is a florilegium in the form of an elephant folio. Its beginning was in the realisation that people need hinterlands – and Charles Darwin was no exception. Darwin’s hinterland – away from his thinking on The Origin of the Species – was Botany. We know Darwin kept journals – 18 of them apparently and Men of Flowers sets itself up to be the 19th; discovered by accident in a provincial library. The journal is printed for the first time – in a limited edition – purporting to be the record Darwin kept while on his 5-year voyage on The Beagle.

The central text is by Humphry McQueen – it has its origins in notions of colour and historical
materialism. The Preface is by me. The images have been made through erasure and                 re-colouring, giving them a feel of the 19 th Century; they contend with the question of how much you need to see of an image before you get it.