Cosmic #horology

Recently commissioned by the Swiss watch company Jaeger Lecoultre, six images from my Crystalline planet series are included their 2015 Yearbook. The publication will be available from today at Jaeger-LeCoultre’s e-Library as well as at Jaeger-LeCoultre boutiques all over the world.

The theme for this year is the cosmos and I am proud to see my work featured alongside photography by Thomas Ruff's rings of Saturn, William A EwingEvgenia ArbugaevaStan Gaz and his magnificent images of meteor sites among others.The publication also features original images and illustrations from the most epic movie of my childhood 2001 A Space Odyssey.

A question runs through the entire history of mankind: what is the all powerful hand governing the perfect organisation of the universe? The “great watchmaker” referred to by René Descartes is a rational idea of God, a metaphor for His existence in virtue of the world’s physical laws. “Small” watchmakers in their workshops have constantly been stealing tiny portions of this power from the great watchmaker, tirelessly watching and studying the stars to reproduce the march of time in miniature mechanisms, thereby capturing a share of the infinitely large in an infinitely small case.
— Jaeger-LeCoultre Yearbook Nine

Just as Jaeger-LeCoultre describe their watches as microcosms, my crystalline planets are created by photographing small geological objects such as quartz and geode to become manifestations of vast planets and galaxies.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
— Arthur C. Clarke
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