Photos taken in space: BRICS Universe exhibition opens in Kazan
BRICS Universe International Photo Exhibition opened in the National Library of Tatarstan on 10 October. It presents photos of UNESCO creative cities located in the countries of the association. The gimmick of the exhibition is that viewers can look at megacities from an unusual angle: from space. Unique photos taken at the International Space Station (ISS) were provided by astronauts, Heroes of Russia Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Ivan Wagner. Read more in a report of Realnoe Vremya.
“This is a hunt for the cities that you want to photograph”
Visitors to the exhibition can get acquainted with the cities of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Each is represented by a pair of photographs. The “earthly” one was taken by a resident of this city, and the one from the space is created by two Russian astronauts. Ivan Wagner could not come to Kazan: he went into space again. While Sergey Kud-Sverchkov introduced the Kazan residents to the exhibition and said that capturing cities with a camera is not that easy:
“In order to photograph a city from space, you need to understand where it is located geographically because, naturally, there are no clues. You need to know the geography well, where this or that city is located relative to large objects. Cities look different in winter and summer. And the station moves quickly, its speed along the orbit relative to the Earth's surface is 8 km/s. That is, you have about one or two minutes to find the city you want to photograph through a long-focus lens and take it clearly.”
The astronauts have little time for shooting. In addition, clouds can impede them from taking a good shot. “It's a hunt for the cities you want to photograph,” says Kud-Sverchkov. And yet, the hardest part of working on the exhibition was selecting the best shots, he shared.
“We had to choose our best photos. It's not easy, because you like this angle and that one, there are daytime photos, night photos, winter photos, summer photos... But we had to choose only one or two. The choice is the hardest thing when you want to show beauty in all its manifestations,” he said.
It was also hard to select the shots taken on Earth. There were many who wanted to share their works: 90 photographers from different countries sent 600 photos. But not all of them made it into the final version of the exhibition. Maria Abramova, a photographer from Kazan, was also lucky. At the opening of the exhibition, she was presented with a photo taken by Kud-Sverchkov at the ISS, signed by the author.
“We have nothing to divide, we have one planet”
The exhibition's tour of the BRICS cities began on 1 February 2024. Since then, it has already visited Rio de Janeiro, Beijing, Mumbai and Cape Town. In Russia, residents of Moscow, St Petersburg, Kargopol (Arkhangelsk Region), Ulyanovsk and Nizhny Novgorod were able to see the exhibition. About 200,000 people have visited the BRICS Universe.
“When you walk through the exhibition, you understand that we are very different but very similar. We have nothing to divide, we have one planet. This community, this understanding that we are all one, it helps to realise,” said project manager, Director of the Nizhny Novgorod Planetarium named after G. Grechko Galina Muromtseva.
She is convinced that this message was read by all visitors to the exhibition, no matter what country it was held in. The project is already helping to strengthen interethnic ties.
“For example, the Rio de Janeiro Planetarium gave us an entire room and said: ‘Fill it with Russian content.’ This will be a window to South America. We will show videos, and the astronauts will hold online meetings,” Muromtseva said.
She added that Kazan was the last city to present this project. The exhibition will be open for a month. But there are new plans and new photographs from space ahead.
