Space Utopia: A Journey Through the History of Space Exploration from the Apollo and Sputnik Programmes to the Next Mission to Mars

by Vincent Fournier

This unique collection of photographs features over ten years of collaborations with the most important space and research centers in the world, resulting in a one-of-a-kind story of the human race to the stars.

Vincent Fournier's visionary photographs provide an imaginative look at space exploration by merging fantasy with reality in images of rockets, otherwordly landscapes, research facilities, and cosmonauts. To produce these extraordinary images, Fournier has collaborated with the world's major space centers and astronomical observatories, including NASA, the European Space Agency, the Russian space agency, and the European Southern Observatory. Readers are given access to confidential locations and projects such as the NASA SLS rocket. Fournier's artistic vision creates a unique look at the history of space exploration, from the early Sputnik and Apollo programs to the future Mission on Mars.

The images invite us to focus on our perceptions of space and time. Fournier questions our past and future utopias--what are our expectations for the future and has the future already happened? The evocative images document and archive while also exploring humankind's myths and fantasies about the future.

Genres: Photography

184 pages, Hardcover

Published March 12, 2019

Reviews

[Dan Gorman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Striking photographs of spaceflight technology and architecture that show the influence of vivid modernist color schemes and also postmodernist minimalism. Spacesuit test subjects amid a vast desert landscape, or technicians in a pure white cleanroom with hard-to-discern borders, make for overwhelming images. I would have liked additional text about the people in the photographs and what motivated them to study or work with space travel.

[Charlotte Dungan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful photography. I enjoyed the singular picture of Biosphere 2 as it is now, as well as the northernmost photos of the research station studying the aurora borealis as a nice complement to the more expected images of NASA facilities.