‘The Blue Marble’ was the name given to the iconic photograph of the Earth taken on 7 December 1972 some 33,000 kilometres from the planet’s surface. The first colour image of the Earth as a planet, taken by the Apollo 17 crew on their journey to the Moon, has become one of the most reproduced images in cultural history. The image’s dramatic depiction of the fragility and vulnerability of the Earth and its isolation in the vastness of space became a symbol of environmentalism and the green movement’s concern for our planet in the 1970s.

The three glass spheres transform the photograph into a magically shimmering, multiplied object. They are a tangible and absurd warning that there is no place for us in the entire Universe other than our planet, which is being threatened by human activity.

A digital animation made from images of a series of ten different glass spheres can be viewed as a video projection in space number 6 on the ground floor.

Barnabás Bencsik