PaperLab Gallery is glad to present one of the most exciting publications of recent year. The book, titled Mastering the Elements, examines scientific perspective as an agent in cultural history, humanism, and ontology. German photographer Jana Hartmann, based in Frankfurt am Main, deals with the multifaceted past of the conquest of nature – from alchemy, through early modernism to trans-humanism – with the artist’s unique and progressive means, depicting how science sought to react to and alternate its all-time world, how it influenced changes in society, philosophy and understanding history. This ensemble of images depicts Enlightened Thinking in refraction that confronts its ambivalent nature and its socio-psychological status quo.