EARTH/MARS COLLAGE WORK NAMED KLOMPCHING GALLERY FRESH FINALIST

30” x 24” (on a 32” x 26” sheet); framed: 35” x 29” — Diptych size: 75” x 29”

KLOMPCHING GALLERY presents the Fresh 2024 Photography Exhibition. Now in its 13th year, the annual exhibition is curated from an international open call for contemporary photographs. Twenty photographers are selected as finalists—all are featured online and in a printed catalogue, with five curated into the four-week exhibition at the Klompching Gallery in Brooklyn, New York. 

Our fictions shape the future. At the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah, analog astronauts blend science with storytelling, sketching the early outlines of humanity's interplanetary future. The first individual to step on Mars could be a child today, their pathway to the stars sculpted by these visionary narratives. Their journey, transforming fiction into reality, is already being built through the joint endeavors of scientists, engineers, and analog astronauts. This project showcases photographs of analog astronauts at the Mars Desert Research Station alongside handmade collages that combine photographs of Mars-on-Earth with images from real Mars (sourced from NASA's public domain archive).