Was it her distant Russian origins, her old passion for science and space, or her consciousness of a bygone 20th century that led Émilie Buzyn to the Baikonur cosmodrome? “Baikonur, the focal point of Russian space exploration and long forbidden to foreigners, has had an uncertain future since the fall of the Soviet Union,” she notes.

Her idea is to create an account of its heroic era, in the style of an archaeologist, while reflecting on its future. Since the day in 1993 when she heard Europe 1 radio station talk about a “techno-bucolic landscape”, Émilie has dreamed about visiting this unusual place. She had just decided to study biology, but quickly abandoned that field to undertake a brilliant academic career in the decorative arts. After five years of coursework in graphic design and multimedia, thanks to which she earns her living to this day, she decided to work toward a degree in photography, which she received with a special award from the jury.

Since then, she has continually made a clear distinction between earning her living and enriching her life – through photographs, any type of photograph. “For a person like me who’s very nostalgic, there’s no such thing as a trivial subject when it comes to photography,” she says. “Quite the contrary – I live in fear of not passing on family photos to my children.” With this project, she will be telling humanity as a whole one of the most fascinating stories of contemporary history: the conquest of outer space.

Achievements since winning the grant
In 2005, her photos on Baïkonour are published in Technikart  magazine devoted to Holidays in Space.

Emilie Buzyn  is one of the authors of Vivre le Sport, a beautiful book produced at the instigation of the Jean-Luc Lagardère Foundation and published jointly with Editions du Chêne in September 2006.

For each book sold, two euros is donated to Foot Citoyen, an association, chaired by Didier Roustan, which promotes the educational value of sports in the world of soccer.