Under the Mothership – A Photograph Blending Science Fiction and Minimalism

Two silhouettes, an infinite desert, a massive ship suspended in the sky. It all begins here. This image is not just a visual composition—it’s the opening shot of a film you’re free to imagine. With Under the Mothership, I invite you to step through the screen and enter a sci-fi scene that is both monumental and silent.

A scene of contact

There are two of them. A man, a woman. Small, almost fragile, at the foot of this metallic structure that seems to have torn the sky open. The ground is arid, lunar. You can almost feel the heat, the silence, the echo of their steps. Have they just landed, or have they been waiting there for this very moment?

The photograph captures a turning point: their eyes turned upward toward this geometric, frozen, perfect form defying gravity. The shadow cast by the “mothership” absorbs part of the landscape. More than an alien architecture, it becomes a symbol of transformation—a threshold, a passage, a beginning.

Between minimalism and epic storytelling

Graphically, the image plays with the codes of minimalist photography: clean lines, strong contrast between the warmth of the ground and the cold metal of the ship, a perfectly centered composition. But beneath this formal simplicity lies an entire sci-fi universe.

“Under the Mothership” is an invitation to imagine the before and after. Who are these two figures? Are they the last humans? Explorers? Interstellar diplomats? Are they on a distant planet… or already at home, in a future we haven’t written yet?

Storytelling through a single frame

As a photographer, I often strive to tell a story without using words. An image can be the beginning of a narrative, the entry point into a fictional world. Here, I wanted to create an atmosphere of suspense and solitude, playing with scale, textures, and ambiguity.

Science fiction fascinates me because it speaks as much about the future as it does about our present. It reflects our fundamental questions: Where are we going? What will we find? Who will we become?

What do you see?

I love when an image leaves room for interpretation. Some may see a tribute to the films of Stanley Kubrick, Ridley Scott, or Denis Villeneuve; others might interpret it as a reflection on our relationship with technology—or simply as a visual reverie. What matters most is what this image makes you feel.

“Under the Mothership” is not a movie scene—but it could have been. It is a pause between two beats of the world, the breath before the unknown.

All the photos displayed on this website are copyright protected © Sebastien Desnoulez. No use allowed without written authorization.
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