This photo of Cosmonaut Elena Serova taken by NASA’s Bill Ingalls on March 12th 2015 is a wonderful example of the so called Accidental Renaissance.
What is Accidental Renaissance? When a press photograph’s remarkably well composed by using the Golden Ratio, and the figures, the poses and the lights are so beautiful, that the whole photo is feel like a classical painting.
The photo above shows Expedition 42 Cosmonaut Elena Serova of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) being carried into the terrain vehicle (ATV), shortly after she and NASA Astronaut Barry Wilmore of NASA and Alexander Samokutyaev of Roscosmos landed in their Soyuz TMA-14M spacecraft in a remote area near the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan. Serova and her colleagues returned after almost six months aboard the International Space Station.
Serova, covered in that heavy blue blanket, definitely looks like Saint Mary, who’s often depicted as a beautiful young woman wearing a similar blue robe and head-kerchief. The five men carrying the tired and weak cosmonaut are placed along the Fibonacci-spiral almost perfectly, while Serova herself is placed on the first cut, with her resting hands in the middle of the Golden section.
A space age masterpiece it is. Sorry, couldn’t resist.
Picture: NASA/Bill Ingalls