Ana Simões, Ana Matilde Sousa - Einstein, Eddington e o Eclipse: Impressões de Viagem (Bilingue)

This book is associated with the exhibition E3 — Einstein, Eddington and the Eclipse and is divided into two parts (an essay and a graphic novel), both bilingual — Portuguese and English — the two main languages used during the expedition.

The graphic novel takes Arthur Eddington’s correspondence with his mother, sister, and the Lisbon Observatory — before, during, and after his expedition to Príncipe Island to observe the 1919 total solar eclipse — as the starting point for a graphic narrative with experimental and impressionistic contours. Focusing on the network of human and non-human actors involved in the expedition — well-known and unknown people, animals, plants, environmental and emotional factors — the comic, which also compiles some of the exhibition’s documents, establishes an intertextual relationship with the theoretical essay on the scientific, political, and social implications of that journey, whose results confirmed Einstein’s revolutionary theory of relativity. The “impressions” of the journey take on a double meaning, referring both to Eddington’s written account and to the marks on the pages, alluding to the material presence of the places visited.