Video: "Afronauts" - Christina de Middel's unusual photo project about black astronauts
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
Who among the boys in childhood did not dream of repeating the feat of Yuri Gagarin and going into space? For us, the inhabitants of a space power, dreams of "land in the window" have always been quite natural. However, few people know that in the distant 1960s, Napoleonic plans to conquer interplanetary spaces ripened in the minds of brave Africans. New project of the famous Spanish photojournalist Christine de Middel (Christina de Middel), nominated for the prestigious 2013 Deutsche Borse Award, talks about Zambia's failed space program.
It turns out that in 1964, the African school teacher Edward Makuka Nkoloso was so impressed with the success of the USSR and America in space flights that he initiated the creation in Zambia of the Zambian National Space Agency, which would provide training for afronauts, or African astronauts. The teacher recruited eleven daredevils ready to fly to Mars. It was rumored that not only humans, but even cats took part in the training program.
Nkolso proved to be very resourceful in the training of future astronauts: he dressed the trainees in shapeless overalls, complemented by helmets of the British army, and forced them to balance on oil tanks that rolled down the mountainside (this is how the resourceful African tried to simulate zero gravity).
Nkolso has repeatedly turned to UNESCO with a request to support his bold undertaking, dreamed of winning a grant for the development of his own space program. However, the international organization did not encourage Nkolso's ambitious plans.
Half a century later, the Spaniard Cristina de Middel became interested in this unusual story, which few people know about today. Her photo project is based on real events, the starting point was several photographs that she managed to find in the archives of the National Academy of Sciences. Of course, in the staged photo session there are elements of fantasy and a share of the author's imagination, but, in general, the photo story about the afronauts looks very realistic. According to Christina herself, with this project she wanted to draw attention to the problem of prejudice against Africans as a less developed nation: "Undoubtedly, postcolonial peoples cannot compare with the developed world at the level of technology, but dreams are the same for all."
By the way, the funny project of the San Francisco photographer Hunter Freeman, which we wrote about earlier on our website Culturology, is devoted to thinking about how astronauts spend their Martian everyday life, who nevertheless managed to go on a flight. RU.
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