A journey through the Solar System
A SCIENTIFIC-artistic journey through the Solar System in the form of 40 large format photographs, selected and processed by the American artist and writer Michael Benson, can be experienced at Plaza del Congreso Eucarístico in Elche until February 16.
‘Otros mundos’ (other worlds) is being organised by Elche city hall and La Caixa foundation, and has come to fruition after the artist chose and treated original blackand-white images taken on the main space agencies’ different planetary missions. Using these images, Michael Benson composed colour mosaics that resulted in ‘beautiful photos’ obtained from six decades of space exploration.
A profound fascination with the night sky has been recurrent throughout civilisation, he noted.
It wasn’t until the launch of the first satellite in 1957 that humans began to adventure into and explore space. In the seven decades that have passed since then, the first great surveys have been carried out of the extraordinarily diverse worlds that make up the solar system, thus ‘giving rise to a bold and absolutely transcendental history’. Some of these contributions are those which appear to be images of ‘other worlds’.
For ‘other worlds’, the visual legacy left behind by these voyages should not only be valued for its scientific importance, but also as a singular chapter in the history of photography.
Michael Benson’s ‘Otherworlds: Visions of our Solar System’ exhibition was inaugurated at the Natural History Museum in London in 2016, and since then it has been on
display in Vienna, Brisbane, and in Spain it was shown for the first time in Barcelona in 2018.
Since then, an adapted version of the exhibition, simply titled ‘Other Worlds’ has been making its way around the country, courtesy of La Caixa foundation, and it is currently touching down in Elche.