Space Project by Vincent Fournier, made from 2007 to 2023 at space-related sites across several continents, portrays the landscapes, institutions, machines, equipment, and people behind human spaceflight.
The project grew from Fournier's encounter with observatory architecture in Mauna Kea's rugged terrain. He then moved among observatories, Cold War space centers, post-Apollo infrastructure, private aerospace facilities, and Moon and Mars analogues. Rather than centering launches, he photographs the "in-between": control rooms, clean rooms, laboratories, training grounds, equipment, and maintenance systems that usually remain off-screen. These settings connect memories of Apollo and 1970s-80s science fiction with later programs such as NASA's SLS and Artemis. Fournier organizes that temporal overlap through tensions between past and future, science and magic, documentary fact and cinematic fiction. His subtitle, "Nostalgia for the Star," links space travel to desire for an imagined elsewhere.
Across the color photographs, broad deserts, volcanic fields, and snow-covered terrain alternate with enclosed technical interiors. Architecture and machinery often dominate the frame, while suited figures appear small against radar arrays, rockets, anechoic chambers, or simulated planetary landscapes. Symmetry, careful spacing, and cinematic light make real facilities resemble sets, yet images of equipment center the hardware itself.
Fournier made the pictures on location with a tripod, initially using a digital view camera and later a medium-format digital camera. Working within restricted access periods, he sometimes directed people, moved existing objects, or adjusted blinds while relying largely on available light. He describes every ingredient as real but the composition as staged, and states that the project uses no photomontage, filters, or retouching. Large-format works have been produced as pigment inkjet prints.
A 2008 outdoor installation at Images Vevey coincided with the publication of Space Project and its second-place award in the professional photojournalism category of the Prix de la Photographie Paris. Later presentations included Les Rencontres d'Arles in 2012, Mori Art Museum in 2016, ArtScience Museum in 2017, Fondation Bullukian and The Ravestijn Gallery in 2019, and the Cité des sciences et de l'industrie in 2023. The expanded monograph Space Utopia appeared in editions dated 2018 and 2019.
![EISCAT Svalbard Radar [ESR], Spitsbergen Island, Norway, 2010.](https://res.cloudinary.com/dkvtc5ncc/image/upload/c_limit,w_1080/f_auto/q_auto/v1793877308/EISCAT_c57cac203a?_a=BAVHyiID0)
![Beijing Military Museum [MMCPR], DF-1 ballistic missile, China, 2007.](https://res.cloudinary.com/dkvtc5ncc/image/upload/c_limit,w_1080/f_auto/q_auto/v1793877356/MMCPR_d866b09050?_a=BAVHyiID0)
![Ergol #9, S1B clean room, Arianespace, Guiana Space Center [CGS],Kourou, French Guiana, 2011.](https://res.cloudinary.com/dkvtc5ncc/image/upload/c_limit,w_1080/f_auto/q_auto/v1793877316/Ergol9_6e6b782024?_a=BAVHyiID0)
![Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory, [GCTC], Star City, Russia, 2007.](https://res.cloudinary.com/dkvtc5ncc/image/upload/c_limit,w_1080/f_auto/q_auto/v1793877321/GCTC_e4bc06c1bd?_a=BAVHyiID0)
![Ts-18 chair #3, Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center [GCTC], Star City, Zvyozdny gorodok, Russia, 2007.](https://res.cloudinary.com/dkvtc5ncc/image/upload/c_limit,w_1080/f_auto/q_auto/v1793877376/Ts_18chair_b658a0e119?_a=BAVHyiID0)
![Soyuz TM trainer TDK-7ST2, Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center [GCTC], Star City, Russia, 2007.](https://res.cloudinary.com/dkvtc5ncc/image/upload/c_limit,w_1080/f_auto/q_auto/v1793877364/Soyuz_T_Mtrainer_58adb5e015?_a=BAVHyiID0)
![Space Shuttle on the launch pad, John F. Kennedy Space center [NASA], Florida, U.S.A., 2011.](https://res.cloudinary.com/dkvtc5ncc/image/upload/c_limit,w_1080/f_auto/q_auto/v1793877368/Space_Shuttle_6d1949c411?_a=BAVHyiID0)
