Afronauts

"Cristina De Middel is a documentary photographer and artist now based in London that has been working as a photojpurnalist for different newspapers in Spain (and with NGO´s such as Doctors Without Borders or the Spanish Red Cross) for almost 10 years . She combines her strictly documentary assignments , which has been exhibited and awarded in several occasions (incuding a National Photojournalism Award Juan Cancelo  and a special mention at the New Fnac Photographic Talent ), with more personal projects . This B-side of Cristina´s work  deliberately  asks the audience to question the language and the veracity of photography  as a document and plays with reconstructions  or archetypes that blur the border between reality and fiction. " Afronauts

In 1964, still leaving the dream of their recently gained independence, Zambia started a space program that would put the first african on the moon catching up  the USA and the Soviet Union in the space race.

"Only a few  optimists supported the project by Edward Makuka, the school teacher in charge of presenting the ambicious program and getting its necessary funding. But the financial aid never came, as the United Nations declined their support, and one of the astronauts , a 16 year old girl, got pregnant and had to quit.

That is how the heroic iniciative turned into an exotic episode of the african history, surrounded by wars, violence, droughts and hunger.

As a photojournalist I have always been attracted by the excentric lines of story-telling avoiding the same old subjects told in the same old ways.

Now , with my personal projects,  I respect the basis of the truth but allow myself to break the rules of veracity trying to push the audience into analyzing the patterns of the stories we consume as real.

“Afronauts” is based on the documentation of an impossible dream that only lives in the pictures.

I start from a real fact that took place 50 years ago and rebuild the documents adapting them to my personal imagery" .Afronauts

Visually stunning as it is I think the real charm from Afronauts comes from the approach of the artist. You can see she was seduced by the story of this far fetched scheme and manages to make it seem plausible if only as a dream. The book and following exhibitions are filled with original text and documents to add validation to the concept of possible space travel. Someone at some point was going to sleep thinking this was going to happen,foolishly or not.