Maria Bacila

Space Seeds and Milk

Milky Way by Maija Tammi

What do you see when you picture outer space?

Endless emptiness, dark and frozen, as far as the eye can see, but scary-exciting because you know there is infinitely more of it beyond your field of vision? Maybe there are celestial bodies, immense objects suspended outside of time, crashing, imploding, expanding, all in absolute alien silence. Do you get butterflies in your stomach when you think about it?

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Female Milk #1 - From the series Milky Way 2015. Archival pigment print 45 x 45 cm. By: Maija Tammi. All rights reserved Maija Tammi

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What do you see when you picture outer space? Do you see this?

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Male Milk #1 - From the series Milky Way 2015. Archival pigment print 45 x 45 cm. By: Maija Tammi. All rights reserved Maija Tammi


For her collective's 2014 annual theme merging sex and space, photographer Maija Tammi takes us galaxy spotting on her black lacquer coffee table.

An exploration of Panspermia (from Ancient Greek pan (all), and sperma (seed)) led her to parallels between human sexuality and the universe. Panspermia theory proposes that life exists through the Universe, carried and dispersed by space dust, meteorites, and comets. Life on earth and therefore humans are the direct result of this intra-space insemination.

Looking further, she learned that the Sambia people of Papua New Guinea center their beliefs on the circulation of sexuality as male and female milk flowing through the human vessels.

"Milky Way" is a series on male milk (semen) and female milk (breast milk), shot up close. This eerie, intimate project representing space through the human dimension is a gentle reminder on permanence and ephemerality.