Andrew McConnell

Book Review Some Worlds Have Two Suns

© Andrew McConnell

“I found a people largely uninterested in the space travellers and yet somehow bound up in this strange ritual. These descendants of nomads once again on the edge of a new horizon”.


─── by Josh Bright, November 26, 2024

Some Worlds Have Two Suns by Irish photographer Andrew McConnell, documents the comings and goings of the Russian Soyuz spacecraft in rural Kazakhstan, and the lives of the local community whose existence is intertwined—almost accidentally—with this portal to space.

Documentary photography by Andrew McConnell. Yuri Malenchenko and Tim Peake have their spacesuits tested before launch


Every three months, a space rocket carrying three astronauts and cosmonauts, bound for the International Space Station, launches from Baikonur Cosmodrome, a Russian-operated spaceport in the remote Ulytau Region of central Kazakhstan. Around the same time, in the grasslands a little to the northeast, another returns to Earth.

Documentary photography by Andrew McConnell. Soyuz rocket TMA-19M sits on Launch Pad One, at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan 2015


Northern Ireland-born Andrew McConnell began his career as a press photographer for a daily newspaper in Belfast, covering the closing stages of the Troubles and the transition to peace. Today, his work focuses on themes of displacement, post-conflict issues, and the environment. His interest in the Soyuz landings began in 2014 after he saw footage of astronauts emerging from their capsule into the frozen Kazakh steppe.

NASA astronaut Kate Rubins, Anatoly Ivanishin of the Russian Federal Space Agency, and Takuya Onishi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency shortly after returning to earth on Soyuz MS-01, Kazakhstan, 2016.
Documentary photography by Andrew McConnell. The Soyuz MS-04 spacecraft carrying Russian cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin, and US astronauts Peggy Whitson and Jack Fischer


“It was deep winter and the spacecraft descended under parachute into an ice world. A ground team battled the harsh conditions to open the capsule and when eventually three humans emerged my heart skipped a beat…I had just returned from covering a war and had witnessed the very worst of humanity, yet here were humans working together and achieving the seemingly impossible. In my jaded state it was profoundly moving and I resolved to go and see it for myself.”

Documentary photography by Andrew McConnell.. Men on horses, in front of nomadic burial tombs, Soyuz landing zone, Kazakhstan 2018.


He visited the site around a year later, and witness a crew of astronauts and cosmonauts taking part in a landing ceremony, watched by a group of locals from the nearby village of Kenjebai-Samai. Although he had initially been drawn to record the space travellers, it was the local community residing in the isolated grasslands that compelled him to return.

Documentary photography by Andrew McConnell. Portrait of a boy sat in an armchair in front of a field filled with metal. Kazakhstan 2018
Documentary photography by Andrew McConnell. A girl plays on space junk near her home in Kenjebai-Samai, Kazakhstan 2022
Documentary photography by Andrew McConnell. Portrait of a boy stood on his head on a sofa in Kenjebai-Samai, Kazakhstan


The Kazakh Steppe—known as the Great Steppe or Great Dala—is the largest dry steppe on Earth, spanning approximately 804,450 square kilometers from the Caspian Depression and the Aral Sea in the east to the Altai Mountains in the west. Each subsequent visit took McConnell further afield, exploring this vast expanse, which, he recalls, “at first appeared as a boundless void, but which, over time, began to reveal unexpected details.”

Documentary photography by Andrew McConnell. Two elderly women dressed in traditional clothing in front of a green building and some trees and dirt roads in Karaganda region, Kazakhstan, 2018


McConnell’s portraits of the local people, set against quotidian backdrops—the interiors of modest homes, local shops, or outdoor settings—are paired with images of the launches and returns. Wider shots capture the open, windswept landscapes of the steppe, a constant backdrop, where the natural scenery is often punctuated by debris from the returning spacecraft, left to rust and decay against the elements.

Documentary photography by Andrew McConnell. Rocket parts, near Kenjebai-Samai, Kazakhstan 2019
Documentary photography by Andrew McConnell. Portait of a shepherd in snow covered fields. Karaganda region, Kazakhstan 2020


There is a surreal quality to McConnell’s images, juxtaposing rural life with symbols of what some might consider humanity’s greatest achievement. The locals appear largely ambivalent toward the arrivals from space, neither in awe nor in protest, continuing with their everyday lives much like the steppe itself—unperturbed by the man-made metallic fragments that scatter it.

Documentary photography by Andrew McConnell.


The word “Soyuz” means “union” in Russian, and in McConnell’s images, it becomes a metaphor for the relationship between the astronauts and the local villagers— one, not of alignment, but of coexistence, of simultaneous presence. For the people of this isolated stretch of Kazakhstan, their world has two suns: the real one and the returning spacecraft. One represents ambition, the other, the everyday routine—each orbiting the other with an enduring, if accidental, harmony.

 

All images © Andrew McConnell

Some Worlds Have Two Suns is published by GOST, and is available here.