Versatile Space

Continuing the traditional partnership with JSC «Aviasalon» and State corporation «Rostec», the «Moscow house of photography» museum presents the exhibition project «Versatile space». This project is timed with the International aerospace show MAKS-2013 (August 27 — September 1). A special section of the exhibition is dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the space flight of the first woman-astronaut Valentina Tereshkova.

Along with the world famous photographs, the exhibition includes themes which have been revealed only recently, photo and video footages of different years, works of modern photographers.

The great Russian scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky established the scientific basis of the following era of astronautics and at the same time was working on the idea of human immortality and endless opportunities for travelling in space. Ideas of the future have always dominated over the concept of present in Russia. The developments of Russian engineer Sergei Korolev became the technological embodiment of those utopias, their conversion to reality; it is also thanks to him that the launch of a space satellite (1957) and the launch of a man into space (1961) were carried out in the USSR for the first time in the world.

Eventually, the idea of the conquest of outer space became not only a technological, but also an ideological myth. The dream of outer space is practically the only soviet myth that was supported in the USSR since the middle of 1920-s, that still hasn’t lost its power. It was this dream that formed heroic ideals of several generations of soviet people, it survived the era of perestroika in the end of 1980-s, it withstood hard challenges after the crash of Soviet Union in 1991.

Space development became the crucial indicator and the symbol of scientific technical progress, thus the attention of the best world photographers has been drawn to this topic since the beginning of the 20th century. The outer space theme went down into history of Russian photography and became one of the crucial ideas for L. Bergoltsev, S. Borisov, A. Abaza, V. Gende-Rote, N. Sviridova and D. Vozdvizhensky, V. Lebedev, D. Gubinsky, I. Snegirev, O. Kuzmin, S. Probrazhensky, A. Pushkarev, A. Mokletsov and many other authors, including famous ones, who had the opportunity to take photos inside the sanctum — in the laboratories and on the spaceport, in the classrooms and in the mission control center — but whose photographs were unavailable for the viewer, they were the most important documents for archiving every step, every day of Soviet and Russian aeronautics.

On the 16th of June, 1963, Valentina Tereshkova made the first space flight in the world among women-astronauts. Her candidacy was supported by N.S. Khrushchev personally with the consent of S.P. Korolev, M.V. Keldysh and N.P. Kamanin. «Chaika» (call sign of V. Tereshkova) made 48 turns around Earth, the flight lasted almost 3 days during which she maintained a logbook and took photographs of the horizon which were later used to detect aerosol layers in the atmosphere. The descending device of «Vostok-6» landed safely in Baevsky district of Altai Krai. Through the photographs and documentary materials it can be tracked step by step how the young woman is becoming the legend of her country.

Every new step in turning the eternal dream of outer space conquest into reality changes our idea of time and space. The development of space technology became the most important factor and the symbol of scientific and technical progress and also the reason of competition between leading space powers. It is hard to name a field of knowledge where the space expedition research hasn’t been used.

The modern field dedicated to recovery and strengthening of Russian astronautics’ prestige and also to the unique experience of Russian astronauts and engineers includes photographs of professional authors and amateurs to whom photography of outer space became the crucial part of their lives. Works of Olga Balashova, Igor Zheleznyak, Vladimir Rodionov, Leonid Faerberg, Vedim Savitsky and others are dedicated to the Russian aeronautics’ achievements of the 21st century, the achievements that strike our imagination more than science fiction blockbusters.

Today the dream of outer space is still the source of vital power and it gives us hope for defeating the global crisis that our world found itself sucked in.