An immense quiet accompanies a sense of looming futility while peering down across vast new worlds. What use is there in discovering and documenting these unknown places? Who would care to seek out lifeless lands lost in the cosmos?

Any civilization capable of such reconnaissance might seem above the little hope that barren lands may bring. Unless, of course, there is a hope of answering the most desperate of needs: Finding a New Home.

Were these images captured by humans on Earth, or on Mars, or somewhere even further away in distance and probability? Maybe they’re recon from another planet’s civilization — one that shares our struggle to find true harmony with the world they have.

Inspired by the remarkable satellite imagery in the compendium “This is Mars,” Reconnaissance suggests what may lie outside our habitable lands — and that we risk missing what's already here while being compelled to look further and further for what’s next.


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TENDER x Nat Sarkissian
May 2022