ix astronauts are bobbing about in a spacecraft, looking out at their planet as they circle it. From up here, 400km above the surface, Japan is a wisp. The Philippines appear “scarily frail”. Though the views are on a planetary scale, the object of their mesmerised observation is as intricate as a Fabergé egg. All of Europe is “outlined with fine precision”, ringed by a golden thread of night-lit roads. Autumn blooms in the Jiuzhaigou valley, Tunisian pink. The astronauts who turn and turn through Samantha Harvey’s finely crafted meditation on the Earth, beauty and human aspiration are in the process of understanding themselves in new ways, too.
