Artist Statement
Dark Side of the Moon is a visual journey exploring connections between our inner and outer worlds, reason and emotion, the known and the unknown. Scientifically, "the dark or far side" of the moon is the view we cannot see from Earth.China recently launched an unmanned space probe to collect samples there, the first such mission in the history of lunar exploration. The Chang’e-6 (named after the moon goddess in Chinese mythology) returned around five pounds of lunar samples to Earth for analysis, providing new insights into the history of the Moon, Earth, and the Solar System.Since prehistoric times, the Moon has occupied a special place in our imaginations, revered in myths, art, science, literature, music, religion, alchemy, astrology, and philosophy. 4.5 billion years old, one quarter the size of Earth, the Moon orbits the Earth and pre-dates the human world. In ancient Greece and Rome, associated with various goddesses, it symbolized rhythms of female desire, intuition, emotions, birth, life, and death.Both the universe and the human body were thought to be interconnected; the universe was the macrocosm, the body was the microcosm. Doctors believed that the body contained humours, affected by the Moon, which influenced our bodily fluids, just as it impacted the waters of the Earth. The full moon was also thought to bring on insanity, hence the word ‘lunacy’.In this book of photographs, astronomical images from the Dark Side of the Moon are interwoven with dream self-portraits and scientific imaging of my interior body. The improvisatory portraits were created during a turbulent time in my life.
Dreams are a dark continent of the unconscious, deconstructing ourselves and our beliefs. Facing our shadow and self-sabotaging selves, we uncover repressed memories; essential in becoming empathetic, more loving humans.Under the microscope, our bodies are a galaxy. Most likely our cells originated in outer space. All five building blocks of DNA and RNA (which encode our genes) have been found in meteorites. These represent the entire blueprint of who we are. Facts, reason, science, intuition, mystery, and emotion—we need to forge deeper connections to other realities and to ourselves. For all its beauty, life’s dark side remains beyond our reach and understanding, residing in the realm of both possibility and destruction.”— Marianne Bernstein
Marianne Bernstein, a longtime artist and curator living and working in Chicago and Paris, is known for collaborative, boundary-crossing work. Dark Side of the Moon, published in 2026, is Bernstein's third book, following Theatre of the Everyday, (2024), which is an artist’s book of photographs spanning 40 years exploring the poetics of everyday life. Her first monograph, Tatted (2009), explored Philadelphia’s renowned tattoo culture. Other projects include Shelter, The Philadelphia Underground, Nomadicube, and a quartet of volcanic island explorations: Due North (Iceland), Due South (Sicily), Due East (Taiwan), and Due West (TBD). She also founded the untitled(space) gallery and co-founded City-Wide Open Studios which merged into ArtSpace New Haven. With early support from the Andy Warhol Foundation, their award-winning programming transformed the city’s cultural scene from the ’90s till the 2020s.
About the Book
Dark Side of the Moon
Publication Date: 1 February 2026Dark Side of the Moon is a poetic journey exploring connections between our inner and outer worlds, reason and emotion, the known and the unknown. Scientifically, the dark, or far side, of the moon is the view we cannot see from Earth.In February 2026, NASA launches the Artemis II carrying four astronauts to circle and photograph the moon, including the far side.In this book of photographs, astronomical images from the far side of the Moon are interwoven with dream self-portraits and medical imaging of the artist’s interior body.Dreams are a dark continent of the unconscious, deconstructing ourselves and our beliefs. Facing our shadow and self-sabotaging selves, we uncover repressed memories that are essential to becoming more empathetic, more loving humans.Under the microscope, our bodies are a galaxy. Most likely our cells originated in outer space. All five building blocks of DNA and RNA (which encode our genes) have been found in meteorites. These represent the entire blueprint of who we are. Facts, reason, science, intuition, mystery, and emotion—we need to forge deeper connections to other realities and to ourselves. For all its beauty, life’s dark side remains beyond our reach and understanding, residing in the realm of both possibility and destruction.
Edition Notes
Copyright © 2026 Marianne Bernstein
No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the photographer.First edition of 300 / Numbered & signed
Printed in Milan, Italy
ISBN: 979-8-218-79018-9
Colophon
Photos
Marianne Bernstein
Except those noted in the Index with an *Texts
Stanton Marlan
Kelsey Halliday Johnson
Anne Higonnet
Marianne BernsteinGraphic Design and Creative Direction studio FM milano ⌝
Printing Grafiche Antiga
Website Dimitry Saïd Chamy / 2urn ⌝Typeface
Sargo by So TypeSpecifications
Closed format: 18 × 24.5 cm (7.09 × 9.65 in)
Open format: 36 × 24.5 cm (14.17 × 9.65 in)92 pages plus soft cover, sewn & perfect bound:
— 84 pages printed in 5/5 colors (CMYK + Pantone 877 Silver) on Sappi Magno Matt 170 gram paper
— 8 pages (inserted after page 72 of the book block) printed in 5/5 colors (CMYK + Pantone 877 Silver) on Fedrigoni Sirio Pearl Platinum 125 gram paper
— Cover with one flap, unfolded size 54 × 24.5 cm (21.26 × 9.65 in), printed in 1/0 color (Pantone 877 Silver) on Fedrigoni Sirio Black 290 gram paper, with glossy UV screen-printing varnish.
Media Kit
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Press Release
Acknowledgements
Special thanks to
My wonderful husband Robert Kalb
Domenico and Cristiano from studio FM milano, for their talent and passion
Kelsey, Anne, and Stanton for their beautiful essays
Irina Filyk and Katie Tackman
Excerpts
From Essays:
“As Rebecca Solnit wrote in A Field Guide to Getting Lost, ‘Leave the door open for the unknown, the door into the dark. That’s where the most important things come from, where you yourself came from, and where you will go.’ Bernstein’s career and photographic works have done just that. The dark side of the moon always turns toward what we cannot reach, a perennial companion orbiting half in secrecy. In our imagination, it has acted as Earth’s mirror and a potent reminder that most of our world carries a hidden face. Beyond the thin layer of what we can perceive, there are infinities murmuring. There are frequencies too slow or too swift for our eyes, like the radiant distant noise of stars being born or the quiet shimmer of atoms dreaming in the dark. To live with the unknown, with wonder, is to find peace alongside these unseeable things. Bernstein’s images remind us that the unseen is not absence but abundance — a cosmos still unfolding behind the veil.”
Kelsey Halliday Johnson is a a curator, writer, and Executive Director of the multi-disciplinary visual and performing art organization SPACE⌝ in Portland, Maine.
“In many cultures, women’s cyclical biology has been linked to the moon. In fact, women’s menstrual cycles can be affected by its wax–wane cycles, though they can also be affected by the company of other women, the social opposite of lunar nature. Whatever was hiding in the dark or operating invisibly gave rise to myths of lunar goddesses, behavior run amok, and countless allegations of irrationality. Emotions arbitrarily ruled women, convention pronounced, so they could not vote or otherwise govern themselves rationally. Women were believed to be lunar.Certainly this book knows that association and refers to it. By juxtaposing her photographs of her own inner, invisible states of mind, mood perturbations, or psychic disarray with photographs of the moon, Marianne revives ancient associations between the moon and wild femininity.”
Anne Higonnet, Barbara Novak Professor of Art History, Barnard College, Columbia University.
“Darkness often symbolizes negative concepts such as evil, ignorance, despair, depression, fear, and death, but it can also represent mystery, the unknown, and the potential for new beginnings or hidden knowledge. For Carl Jung and the alchemists, darkness exists in a dialectical relationship called Sol Niger, a ‘blacker than black’ aspect of the psyche. The presence of this dark light, the lumen naturae, is the light of darkness itself, expressing the depths of the human soul.An opening to a divine mystery, it transcends our ordinary sense of knowledge and forms a conjunction of the known and the unknown, an emptiness that is also a fullness. This state can be engaged through imagination, poetry, art, and dreams. For Jung, engagement with this dark unknown is a connection with the unconscious, the shadow, and other archetypal experiences essential to the opening of a vision of the Self. Linking consciousness and the unconscious is a pivot point between opposites, evoking the wonders of imaginal life, which appear to have a telos: a pathway toward an as-yet-unknown reality.”
Stanton Marlin, Jungian analyst, scholar, author of The Black Sun: The Alchemy and Art of Darkness.
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