Genesis of Tomorrow

The choice is with us still, but the civilization now in jeopardy is all humanity. As the ancient myth makers knew, we are children equally of the earth and the sky. In our tenure of this planet we've accumulated dangerous evolutionary baggage — propensities for aggression and ritual, submission to leaders, hostility to outsiders — all of which puts our survival in some doubt. But we've also acquired compassion for others, love for our children and desire to learn from history and experience, and a great soaring passionate intelligence — the clear tools for our continued survival and prosperity. Which aspects of our nature will prevail is uncertain, particularly when our visions and prospects are bound to one small part of the small planet Earth. But up there in the cosmos, an inescapable perspective awaits. National boundaries are not evident when we view the Earth from space. Fanatic ethnic or religious or national identifications are a little difficult to support when we see our planet as a fragile blue crescent fading to become an inconspicuous point of light against the bastion and citadel of the stars. There are not yet obvious signs of extraterrestial intelligence, and this makes us wonder whether civilizations like ours rush inevitably headlong to self-destruction. I dream about it, and sometimes they're bad dreams. (Carl Sagan)

When the Voyager spacecraft left Earth in 1977, it carried a Golden Record with greetings, images and sounds, selected by Carl Sagan, astronomer at NASA: The essential information about human life on Earth, addressed to extraterrestrial civilisations. Among the images depicting men, nature and cultural traditions, there was a legendary photograph, taken by Lennart Nilsson. It shows the conception, the beginning of life. Nilsson, Swedish photojournalist, developed a revolutionary method: With the help of advanced, specially designed equipment, with endoscopes, he documented the inside of man down to the level of a cell, the creation of a human being, from conception to birth. His photographs show floating clouds of glowing tissue: Incredible beauty of creation and the ‘Genesis of Tomorrow’.

Dirk Jakobs is concerned about creation. Like Nilsson, he captures the splendour of life in overwhelming images. His painting ‘Genesis of Tomorrow’ is homage to life from the very beginning to the latest future: Swirl of colours, round and round, red and blue. The brushstrokes reveal the dynamic act of painting, the passion for the subject. What do we see? An insight of microcosm? Cells, conception, tissue? Or does Dirk Jakobs lead us in the sphere of macrocosm? Do we look at a rotating galaxy, millions of light-years away? Comets, planets appear, floating on their orbit and bound by a mysterious gravity. Or is it the sheer un-imaginable? The Big Bang, birth of the universe? Why differentiate? It is all one. Nilsson showed formerly hidden processes, he unveiled the secret source of life. So does Dirk Jakobs. But whereas the Swedish photographer was devoted to human anatomy, Jakobs focuses on the human intellect.

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