Heaven in Photography: A Look at Infinity

Angela Rosana
Oct 6, 2023
2 min read

Woman in a lavender field with sky in the background — Photo by Sasha Crimea 🇷🇺

The human gaze has always been drawn to celestial space. Whether as a blue expanse during the day or a starry abyss at night, the sky has been both a backdrop and a protagonist in our relationship with the world. A lavender field in Provence is as magnificent as the sky that stretches above it and enaltece as colors and texture of flowers. Here, it gains an additional dimension, becoming a portal to explore themes such as identity, freedom and the complex relationship between human beings and the natural environment and the cosmos.

starry sky with lake and trees — Photo by Nara Guarnieri 🇧🇷

In antiquity, when mythologies were the primer of knowledge, the sky was seen as the domain of the gods, a cosmic tapestry that made us question: how far are we free and where Does destiny begin? In the Renaissance, art often presented the sky as a luminous divine abode,contrasting with earthly human fallibility.

Couple in a field of flowers with blue sky in the background — Photo by Maira Karas 🇧🇷

Today, inserted into the frame of a camera, the sky, although devoid of deities, still questions us about our own limits and freedoms. In the photographs taken in cenarios of social repression or conflict, heaven often presents itself as a cutting irony — the vision of unattainable freedom — or perhaps, a last refuge for hope. Art no longer seeks merely to portray an idealized sky, but reflects a complex texture of meanings, a mixture of freedom and limitation, of aspiration and reality.

Black and white photo of a pair of sneakers hanging from a light string with the sky in the background — Photo by Nascimento Júnior 🇧🇷

Amid the whirlwind of transformations of our contemporaneity, the sky has not lost its timeless allure; on the contrary, it urges us to probe even more deeply into our position in the universe, catalyzing our interrogations of our role in the web of life and our incessant search for meaning. Therefore, by capturing the sky in a photograph, we are participating in an eternal dialogue about what it means to be human in a landscape of endless complexities.

Photo PB silhouette of boy seen from below with buildings around and sky in the background — Photo by Gutemberg 🇧🇷

But what is the culmination of this fascination? Heaven, in its eternal mutability, reflects our yearning for truth and significance in an indifferent universe. He, in addition to being an element in our photographic composition, echoes our highest aspirations and our deepest concerns. As a mirror of the human, the sky challenges us: how far will you look?