Life On Mars

Many theorists and historians allege that the Soviet Union had sent up multiple ‘manned’ shuttles into space before the official launch with Yuri Gargarin, being the first human in space. In 1961, two Italian amateur Italian radio engineers recorded the voice of a female cosmonaut burning up on re-entry during a suspected shuttle launch test flight. Achille and Govanni Judica-Cordiglia, recorded signals of a female voice making a distress call on a soviet space frequency. If this recording was real, this would make the first woman in space, or one of the first humans in space before Gargarin. The fact that there are lost cosmonauts floating around in space is something hauntingly incredible.

But what if, somehow they managed to survive for decades, with the implications of time distortions and complex physics, and returned to earth. How would one comprehend the shock and alienation of returning home after floating around in the empty expanse of space? What happened to the world they knew, where now everyone is enslaved to hand held computers, connected via the invisible and wireless internet, and the Soviet Union no longer exist. They return home, only to be aliens to a strange new world.

Shot on Mamiya RZ67 Pro II with Lomography Lomochrome Purple.