“Where Is Everybody?”

Look around you.

I’m not just talking about those who are nearest and dearest. Look further. Beyond your street. Beyond your town. Beyond your city, beyond your country and even beyond your world.

Where is everybody?

Doesn’t it seem odd that given all that space out there that it’s just us? Is there obvious proof that we could be alone in the Galaxy?

Now before you start thinking I’ve donned a tin foil hat and began x-raying all of my mail before opening it, I haven’t. And neither have I stumbled upon some top-secret classified information or just got back from a week’s vacation at “Area 51”.

I’m talking about something called Fermi’s Paradox. And it is a small part of what is forming my HND final major project at Solihull College. I’ll get onto this later…

For my project, I am creating a landscape piece inspired by the works of Gregory Crewdson and Jeff Wall. With Crewdson, his images can often be described as somewhat melancholic or even disturbing with the blurring of the boundaries between fiction and reality. This is thanks in no small part to the artist’s painstaking preparation of elaborate sets, meticulous lighting, and strong casting.

Jeff Wall is equally as meticulous in his planning and executing of his photography. In a recent interview with The Guardian, Wall described his work as “cinematographic” re-creations of everyday moments he has witnessed, but did not photograph at the time. “To not photograph,” he says, “gives a certain freedom to then re-create or reshape what I saw.”

By now you are probably wondering what all this has to do with being alone in the galaxy? Well, there is another one of Crewdson’s images that represents not only that theme but also the idea of creating something on a large-scale and something totally out of my realm of expertise. It is this image –

Crewdson gave this image no title but I think you can take two meanings from it. It could either be a helicopter shining a spotlight down onto this person (perfectly acceptable explanation), or it could be something else. Something more unexplainable. Maybe something extraterrestrial. Whilst the first possible meaning is fine, I don’t think it has much of a story there so naturally, I have gone with the second possible meaning and it is here where my FMP is going….

So – Fermi’s Paradox. What is it?

The Fermi Paradox seeks to answer the question of where the aliens are. Given that our star and Earth are part of a young planetary system compared to the rest of the universe — and that interstellar travel might be fairly easy to achieve — the theory says that Earth should have been visited by aliens already.

So with the Crewdson and Wall imagery in my head, swirling around like a Texas tornado and then added to that the idea of the Fermi Paradox, a plan started to form and the picture became just that little bit clearer.

The picture would have to be more than just a picture. I would have to create a back story, a narrative as to why the scene you will see is happening. I will need to explain how and why people claim to be abducted and how often, if you are to have any understanding of what’s happening here. And most importantly, who it is happening to. You will need to know that the person in my picture has experienced this type of thing before and you will know that she is not afraid this time.

Below is just a mock up and my first attempt but hopefully, when you see the final image, you will understand why she cannot be by herself…