Space Project

Space Project is a subjective inventory of the most representative places, objects or situations regarding space exploration. I have photographed the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center of Star City in Russia; the Baikonour Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan; the Space Centers of NASA in Cape Canaveral in the United States; Ariane Espace in Guiana; the observatories in the Atacama desert in Chile, in New Mexico, and in Nevada; the Mars Desert Research Station of Martian simulation in the Red Desert of Utah... As usual, it is the dream part which interests me. My images make our childhood "memories" of the future come back to life. I like when the border between reality and fiction remains vague. To travel in space or to explore other planets is as much a collective dream as a desire of a child. I try to make bubbles of memories reappear which carry at the same time my own experience and universal memories. When in 1969 we were able to see for the first time photographs of the Earth from the Moon, it was a definitive breaking point that forever modified our consciousness of ourselves and our planet. —Vincent Fournier