Cyanotype Photography - Dan (Hendrickson) Takes Pictures

About Cosmologica

Cosmologica documents a fictional space exploration mission using the 19th-century printing technique known as cyanotype. The series uses photographs of real-world spaceports, dust clouds, and light to tell the story of an explorer’s journey across the cosmos to a new planet.

The photographer behind this series has a passion for space, but is grounded on Earth with camera in hand. Instead of actually flying to space, Cosmologica is an imaginary mission that contemplates our time and place in the cosmos.

The first half of the series centers on the universality of the cosmos as the explorer photographs deep space for the first time. The stellar nurseries, comets, star clusters, and other phenomena depicted in this series may be reminiscent of the Hubble Space Telescope, but were re-contextualized images from our own world. These faux views from space serve as a visual reminder that we are in fact living in a universe made of common constituent elements.

Following this initial deep space survey, the explorer unexpectedly spots a potentially habitable planet in an otherwise unremarkable star system. To take a closer look, the explorer’s spaceship touches down on the planet at what appears to be a purpose-built desert spaceport. Once again, Earthly images are re-framed in cyanotype to remind us that our home is a planet in a vast and mysterious cosmos.

Upon landing, the explorer discovers hundreds of abandoned airships and artifacts. Clearly this planet once hosted a sky faring civilization, but where now are the individuals who built these ships? Were they wiped out in a mass extinction event? Did they leave the planet behind? All of these questions are jumping-off points as the viewer peers at a photographic medium from the 1800s.