Earth to Major Tom
Michael Najjar is a photographer training to be the first artist in space
LIKE MOST KIDS Michael Najjar was fascinated by Star Trek and yearned to become a spaceship commander when he grew up. But instead of Mr Spock, he became a visual artist after getting his first camera at 16 and falling in love with photography. He went on to study media art in Berlin, but the dream of outer space has never quite faded. Today, Najjar has plans to be the world’s first artist in space. His last mountaineering expedition, the 7,000-metre high Mount Aconcagua he scaled in 2009, is miniscule compared to this next target. Born in the 1960s in Landau, Germany, Najjar has been a leader in the contemporary art movement. “I’m a conceptual artist,” he says. “I focus on the construction of simulated reality, and I approach art by turning the fields of science and art into visions of future social structures impacted by technology. My Outer Space series combines manipulated photography and computer renderings that blur the line between fiction and reality. I call this hybrid photography.” In Outer Space, he features the latest developments in space exploration. But he’s also pushing to become an astronaut. As one of Richard Branson’s pioneer astronauts, full-on training is not required, but he wants in. It took one year of arbitrating back and forth to convince Russia’s Star City to train the artist. So far it has not been easy. “The hardest was definitely the stratosphere flight in a Russian MiG29 jet fighter,” Najjar reckons. “It flew at almost twice the speed of sound and I had to deal with up to forces of seven Gs on my body. As a result, I temporarily lost colour vision and almost fainted twice.” Even harder was knowing that Branson’s SpaceShipTwo, the vehicle he was supposed to fly on, crashed during a test flight. But when he’s set his mind on doing something, Najjar won’t be stopped. Once he’s done with the boot camp and ready to fly supposedly sometime this year, he is going out to space for two hours. I ask if he’s nervous and he replies with a good-natured chuckle. “Nope, not at all.”