helios i

HELIOS I (2026), [CROMOGENIC PRINT], TOM LIGGETT.

Above is a world-first: an image forged in space, where art and science converge into something both material and unknowable. On May 2nd, 2025, unexposed photographic film was carried using a weather balloon beyond Earth’s atmosphere to 121,000 feet, four times the height at which commercial airlines fly, into a region where radiation moves unfiltered and unseen, far beyond the conditions in which images are traditionally made. There, without lens or camera, ultraviolet C radiation and cosmic radiation (muons), formed from the event horizons of black holes millions of light-years away, are etched directly into the emulsion, forming an image not through light, but through contact, through exposure to forces that exist beyond human vision. Created in total darkness, it is an image that should not exist: a record of interaction rather than observation, where the universe forges itself onto material. What remains is a raw analogue trace of the universe’s most extreme energies.

The image above was chromogenically printed using a process in which light is channelled through the negative and projected through the lens of a De Vere 5108 enlarger onto a 30 × 36-inch sheet of light-sensitive paper. The unique formation of colour seen in the final print emerged through eight days of printing, refining the process until the final result was achieved.

The project depicts space in a way never seen before, they offer a haunting, abstract look at the extreme invisible forces that surround our planet, blurring the lines between fine art and nuclear physics.