Cristina de Middel is a Spanish photographer. Moving between documentary and fiction, she is known for works that question the stories and histories produced by photography, as well as the images shaped by media. She is a member of Magnum Photos and is also known for having served as the agency’s president.
This book is a reconstruction of The Afronauts, Cristina de Middel’s breakthrough work and one of the defining photobooks of the 2010s, published as part of Editions Bessard’s Zine Collection series. Taking as its motif an actual space program that existed in Zambia in the 1960s, the work interweaves documentary and fiction while questioning fixed ideas and stereotypes about Africa.
This zine format offers a compact version of the world of The Afronauts, a work that holds an important place in the history of self-published photobooks. Through images filled with Afrofuturist and science-fictional imagination, it allows readers to experience the work’s movement between fact and imagination, record and staging.
Zine Collection Numero-12 Afronauts Cristina de Middel Editions Bessard, 2014 210 × 150 × 3 mm With signed print
