Installation view, Mchael Najjar's "outer space" series, Fotografiska Shanghai, 2025. Photo credit: Michael Najjar
Michael Najjar's series "outer space" looks at the latest developments in space exploration and the way they will shape our future life on Earth, in Earth's near orbit and on other planets.
"europa" conveys humankind's irrepressible urge to discover new worlds and to learn more about the origins of human life. It visualizes the surface of Jupiter's moon Europa, one of the places where the probability of finding life outside Earth is the greatest. The composition fuses landscape photographs from a glacier region in Iceland with images of the surface of Europa taken by the Galileo space probe during its flyby.
"sands of mars" focuses on the idea of the future colonization of Mars. It depicts a future scenario of a Mars habitat by merging images of a remote and endless Mars-like landscape with geodesic domes. It also focuses on the relationship between interior and exterior space. In the early days of Mars colonization, we will have a completely new planet to live on, but very little space to live in.
"space garden" imagines future greenhouses in space. Based on images from the Eden Project, UK, a complex of artificial biomes that is home to over 100,000 plants, "space garden" explores the idea of how the research carried out could one day contribute to install a biome on a spaceship or space station - or even create an autonomous ecosystem, a habitat for plants on the moon or Mars. It also looks at how zero or microgravity affects plant growth.
