posted 12-11-2019 08:39 AM               

Portraits of a Planet: Photographer in Space

NASA Astronaut Don Pettit
Dec. 4, 2019 – March 6, 2020
New Haven, Connecticut

Yale's Center for Collaborative Arts & Media (CCAM) is thrilled to announce a new exhibition by NASA astronaut Don Pettit — Portraits of a Planet: Photographer in Space. The space photography is exhibited throughout CCAM, with more than twenty prints, two murals, and an architectural-scale print viewable from York Street.

Portraits of a Planet: Photographer in Space is CCAM's first large-scale exhibition, transforming the CCAM Gallery and corridor.

CCAM Director Dana Karwas was interested in bringing Don and his work to campus to highlight his unique perspective on the intersection of art and science. The exhibition brings up questions around artistic process, scientific practice, and how these two things co-mingle when one is 250 miles above the earth aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

At the entrance of the exhibition is Ghost Panel, a ten-foot mural showing a 30-minute exposure composite of city lights, the earth's horizon, and part of the ISS hanging seemingly motionless above. The image is a magnificent way to see mechanical and orbital patterns of light. On the opposite wall is Truss, another ten-foot mural showing a space station truss with solar panels and equipment realized against the velvety blackness of space.

These mechanical artifacts are examples of Don's surprising presentation — the ISS, of course, is a tool with which to study the earth and space, but Don's images capture this machinery alongside the object of its study. Overall, Don's images take the visitor beyond purely informational visuals and elicit an evocative and emotional experience, asking us to reflect our own existence in the universe and our own peculiar frame of reference.