Figure: Flora Incognita from the Herbarium of Potential Astrobotany, 2023–2025
Momentum is pleased to present Vincent Fournier’s new body of work Flora Incognita (2023–2025) at The Photography Show 2025 presented by AIPAD. The exhibition brings together two interwoven series—Flora Incognita and Space Project.
For over two decades, Vincent Fournier has explored futuristic imaginaries through works held in major collections such as the MET, Centre Pompidou, and JP Morgan. The centerpiece of his AIPAD presentation, Flora Incognita, is a speculative herbarium of alien flora created with 3D modeling and animation. It is inspired by collaborations with scientists from CNRS, NASA, and MNHN. The work questions the adaptability of life amid ecological upheaval and reimagines botanical heritage on other worlds. It offers a poetic reflection on our place in the cosmos.
Between Surrealism and scientific speculation, Flora Incognita envisions what Earth’s flora might look like if it grew on other planets. Inspired by the uniqueness of recently discovered exoplanets, this herbarium extrapolates new forms of plant life capable of adapting to extreme phenomena: supersonic winds, gravitational collapse, vapor oceans, gaseous tidal waves, metallic rain, hot ice, and endless days and nights.
This dialogue between the terrestrial and the extraterrestrial resonates particularly today with the metamorphoses of the living world and its increasingly sophisticated representations. The use of photogrammetry—a technique that models plants by assembling hundreds of photographs—allows for the extrapolation of growth architectures while preserving the plants’ precise forms, colors, and textures with exceptional detail.
Presented as encyclopedic plates, this potential astrobotanical herbarium is the result of exchanges with several scientists specializing in speculative exobiology and astrobiology, in collaboration with the National Museum of Natural History, the CNRS, and NASA. The herbarium is accompanied by a “bauplan,” which organizes the shared structural elements of all plant species, and a phylogenetic classification based on their degrees of relatedness.
By mirroring the potential adaptability of our flora on other planets, the project also raises questions about the challenges Earth faces in the context of climate upheavals. This work of speculative biology proposes a reinvention of life, with transformative possibilities unfolding infinitely, like a garden of delights—a nod to the famous painting by the Flemish Primitive Hieronymus Bosch, who, alongside other artists of his time, created the first landscapes of humanity, blending belief, reality, and utopia.
Vincent Fournier French artist, born in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, in 1970, is currently living between Paris and Arles. He graduated from the École nationale supérieure de la Photographie in
Arles in 1997. For over twenty years, Vincent Fournier has been developing an extensive body of work centered around photography. His work explores the imaginaries of the future– both past visions and those we project for tomorrow– through various series: space exploration with Space Project (2007–21), humanoid robots in The Man Machine (2009–10), utopian architecture in Brasilia (2012–19) and Kosmic Memories (2021–22), the reinvention of the living in Post Natural History (2013–22) and Auctus Animalis (2022), and most recently, the flora of exoplanets with Flora Incognita (2024–26).
Selection of Acquisitions from Museums and Institutions
Metropolitan Museum of Art New York, Centre Pompidou Paris, LVMH, JP Morgan New York, Société Générale Paris, MAST Foundation Bologne, Domaine des Étangs Massignac, Vontobel Zurich, Swiss Life, Black Gold Museum, Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature Paris, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Mâcon, Fondation Bullukian Lyon, Institut Français du Cambodge, Phnom Penh. The Brasilia series is on view at The Metropolitan Museum New York (The MET), Fifth Avenue, Gallery 916.
Momentum is a contemporary fine art gallery dealing exclusively in fine art photography. Based in Miami Florida the gallery represents mid-career and emerging fine art photographers from around the globe. With a growing list of international artists representing several continents, these artists embody a vast and varied range of contemporary styles of photography, engaging the genres of cinematic narrative, landscape, documentary, and portraiture while drawing from conceptual themes and abstraction. Their respective work explores contemporary expressions of photography as an artistic technique.
