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Printed on Hanhmühle cotton rag. 75cm x 50cm. Signed edition of 5.
Plus lourd que l’air (2021) is a photograph I took while considering the geological relationship between Iceland and the Moon, in particular trying to identify certain rocks that also occur on the Moon, such as basalt and breccia. Iceland is otherworldly in its sparseness and silence. It’s no secret that Iceland’s terrain was used to prepare astronauts for the Apollo lunar missions due to the similarities in the landscape.
The title ‘Plus lourd que l’air’ translates as ‘heavier than air’. It is inspired by the 19th century French photographer Felix Nadar, who took the first aerial photograph. He was so obsessed with air travel and taking photographs in hot air balloons that he commissioned Le Géant, a giant balloon that inspired novels such as ‘Five Weeks in a Balloon’ and ‘From the Earth to the Moon’ by Jules Verne. Verne and Nadar founded La Société d’encouragement de la locomotion aérienne au moyen du plus lourd que l’air (The Society for the Encouragement of Air Travel by Means of Machines Heavier than Air).
I thought about the geological history of Iceland... from the fiery underbelly of the land to this wonderful material connection with the Moon, a ‘floating’ rock so connected to the Earth by gravity, the tidal cycles dependent on that force and the effect of those tides on the formation of the basalt rocks. It explores the mysterious material relationship that we really can never fully comprehend by just observing. We will really never know this relationship on an experiential level, due to the geological and hydrological timeline, and there is something remarkable about not knowing.