THE MISSION CONTINUES

FRENCH PHOTOGRAPHER VINCENT FOURNIER AND HIS 10-YEAR QUEST TO DOCUMENT SPACE EXPLORATION

In a photo project that spanned over 10 years, French photographer Vincent Fournier, 49, set out to shoot images that represent our missions into outer space. His coffee-table-worthy book, Space Utopia, published this year by Rizzoli in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon– landing mission, is a collection of images he hopes will encourage us to think about the past, present and future of space.

A world-renown photographer whose work from his “Brasilia” series is on permanent exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the LVMH collection in Paris, Fournier has focused in his career almost entirely on space travel, robots and technology. His Space Utopia project began in 2006 while he was shooting the Maua Kea Observatory on the Big Island of Hawaii where he became “fascinated by the primitive landscape.” As seen on the following pages, Fournier gained access to places generally restricted to the public such as observatories operated by the likes of NASA, the European Space Agency, Roscosmos, the European Southern Observatory and a Mars Desert Research Station

in Utah (where small teams of volunteers live in a simulated environment like that on Mars).

Some of Fournier’s images include cosmonauts in their space gear, scenes from the ground-control firing room of the Apollo 8 mission and the launchpad of the last U.S. shuttle liftoff, isolated observatories in the Arctic and dystopian scenes from the Mars research center, complex engine assemblies for the next-generation Space Launch System and arachnoid spacecraft, sculptural echo-free rooms and more.

Fournier has described the space project as something different than “the spectacle of a spaceship lifting off.” Rather, “it is more about the in-between, or what is not often seen. It focuses on what is off-screen.”

Fournier continues to shoot additional space-themed subjects, including Orion, the long-range, interplanetary spacecraft, which he calls “Apollo’s little brother” and will be launched by NASA to Mars in 2021. He is also working with SpaceX and Blue Origin, the private space exploration companies of Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla, and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos.

For Fournier, the mission continues.

“BOTH SOLARIS BY ANDREI TARKOVSKY AND 2001, SPACE ODYSSEY SHOW THE COSMIC SPHERE AS THE REFLECTION OF INTIMACY.”

“MY WORK IS INSPIRED BY SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH AND BY CERTAIN FORMS OF UTOPIAS. IT IS THE PART OF DREAM AND IMAGINATION THAT INTERESTS ME IN SCIENCE — ITS FICTIONAL POTENTIAL.

“IMAGINING A FUTURE CAN BRING NEW PERSPECTIVES. BEING BORED IS DREADFUL.”

THS OUND OF THE SPACE RACE Below: An anechoic chamber—or echo-free chamber—in Toulouse, France, absorbs sound waves, replicating the conditions of space and is used by astronauts to train for the silence they’ll encounter during their missions. Bottom: Sokol KV2 spacesuit positioned in a Russian Kazbek seat from a Soyuz rocket; the Soyuz spacecraft were first launched in the 1960s and today are the only means to bring crews to the International Space Station. Right: China tested the “1059” short-range ballistic missile in November 1960, before it was renamed the DF-1 the following year; Beijing, China.

Opposite: An engineer dressed in a SCAPE suit (self-contained atmospheric protective ensemble) in the controlled environment of a cleanroom in French Guiana. Top: An ATV produced in Toulouse, France; five of these unpiloted cargo carriers were launched between 2008 and 2014 to supply the International Space Station. Above: In the lunar robotic research facility in the Atacama Desert in Chile—one of the dryest places on the Earth— researchers test tools and collect data to prepare for Mars exploration.

Vincent Fournier’s book Space Utopia, is out now and can be purchased at rizzolibookstore.com.