16.09.2014 / Coonabarabran, AU

ONE MORE FOR THE ROAD
The final post from Australia comes from Sydney, from where I am about to fly back to Germany. My time here was filled with beautiful encounters and impressions, and I couldn’t be more grateful to all the people who showed me around, let in into their lives and take photographs. I am catching myself already editing the material that I shot… As for every journey, a in-depth visual story will be published on the website after my return (will be announced in a newsletter). I usually don’t read much while I am on a journey to take photographs. I just cannot – and do not want to – concentrate on anything but the visual impressions coming my way. This time I did carry a book, which I had discovered just before my departure: “Cyrano oder Die Rückkehr vom Mond” (Cyrano or The return from the moon) by German writer Durs Grünbein. The 80-some poems, which are all titled after moon-craters, deal with mankind’s fascination with the moon and how human perception of Earth may have changed since we’ve seen the first images of the Blue Planet from Outer Space. In a short essay at the end of the book, Grünbein writes: “We’ve been to the moon and are looking out there further and further – and that’s immensely exciting. But isn’t it just as spectacular that this gives us the opportunity to see Earth, our home, with new eyes?” That is a thought closely related to the approach of the ‘deep dark pale blue’-project. That’s what I am trying to do with this body of work – addressing the fundamental questions that astronomy holds for our existence here on Earth. That pale blue dot.