Throughout the Universe the same patterns repeat. Though humanity projects itself as a great force, bigger than anything else on earth, the truth is that no matter what we do, we will always be a product of Nature. We will always be subject to the laws of Nature because we, as a living organism, are a part of it. Indeed, if we look at one of the most oldest and simplest organism of Nature - the lichens – we can see our own reflection in it.
If we look at our cities from space – our heritage and our creations – we can see that the way we organize, the way we get together in these cities follows the same logic as the lichens on rocks. So here is the metaphor I want to create, our cities, to the surface of the earth are like lichens to the surface of the rocks. Life is just a matter of scale and we are in the center of it. Psychologically, with our egocentrism, and physically in our size.
© Google Maps - Earth at night - Image by NASA Suomi NPP Satellite
In the following images I took photos from satellites in daylight and transformed the grey, urbanized areas of the cities into the colour of lichens. The green areas around the communities, where men had no impact, were changed into grey.
New York
Lisboa
London
São Paulo
Tokyo
Paris
The following images are from the final exhibition in LUCA School of Arts in Gent Belgium. It compromises an installation where I projected images of cities seen from space onto rocks and an exhibition composed by prints of manipulated satellite pictures of cities.
