ALISA
MARTYNOVA
Russia
Nowhere Near
Almost everything we know about distant reaches of the Universe has come to us via traditional cosmological messengers. Though some claim that there is another type of cosmological messengers – the fastest known stars that are trapped orbiting the supermassive black holes. When two galaxies collide, the supermassive black holes at their centers interact in a way that flings away orbiting stars out of the merged galaxy at super high speeds, some of them traveling fast enough to escape their galaxy entirely. If there was a mechanism of tracing them, we ought to be able to see unbound stars traveling across the Universe.
“The migrant’s journey is a long one, night after night, inching toward the horizon like constellations. Not just typical stars, they are high-velocity stars, ejected at hyper speed by black holes, sprinkled across the cosmos by the force of their propulsion. And these scattered stars, in their crossing, are like the migrants that I met in Italy who had come from Nigeria, The Gambia, and Ivory Coast, across Europe, seeking El Dorado. In the choral testimony of the voices I collected, the celestial constellation is one of young Africans from different countries, of different genders and with different traits, a testament to the individuality and diversity that they each embody. Some young migrants aimed to reach Libya from southern countries, often finding a dead end in prison. Others aimed at Europe’s El Dorado; many found it, despite sacrifices, its promise intact. Others met a dreadful reality – the dream they had long harbored, treasured on those endless nights of travel, shattered.” Alisa Martynova
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Alisa Martynova (b. 1994) is a documentary photographer based in Florence, Italy since 2015. After finishing her studies in Foreign Philology in her native country, she graduated from a professional photography three year program at Fondazione Studio Marangoni in Florence, Italy in 2019. She has received awards such as Premio Combat (2019), Canon Young Photographers award (2019) and the World Press Photo award in Portraits Series section (2021). Her work was exhibited in numerous festivals and galleries, namely Photo Brussels (2021, Belgium), Cortona on the move (2021, Italy) and Encontros da Imagem (2021, Portugal). In 2023 her work was exhibited in Rome on occasion of the Out-of-frame exhibition by Contrasto photo agency.
