Progress is hot on our heels: Legendary shots where the future unceremoniously burst into the past (7 photos)

Remove the banal Asian megacities from the frame, and the contrast between eras becomes truly cinematic and paradoxical. One of the most powerful examples in the history of photography is the famous 1977 shot of an ordinary Californian boy on horseback, frozen in the desert, watching the transport of the 110-ton space shuttle Enterprise. Equally absurd and majestic are the shots of supersonic military fighter jets flying low over the battlements of medieval European castles during an air show. In the water, this dissonance is taken to its extreme: enormous steel missile cruisers and aircraft carriers brazenly cut through the waves next to fragile wooden boats during exercises. These rare, honest photographs are a merciless reminder that while one part of humanity is storming space and building high-tech killing machines, another continues to live in the scenery of the deep past, sharing the same horizon.