How does a person end up spending their life measuring the formation of galaxies? Portraits of Astronomers, part of Platonic Press’s new collection, explores the answer to this question by pairing original black and white portraits with long-form conversations featuring some of the world's most remarkable practitioners. 

Minco van der Weide, founder and photographer for the London-based independent publisher, travels to meet a group of extraordinary astrophysicists who have changed the landscape of their field. In new interviews, they cover topics from village-bound childhoods to adolescent uncertainty, to the decisions that led them to the careers and lifestyles they love. Each conversation has been developed into a biographical essay and paired with black and white portraits taken on location in Oxford, Boston, and Tokyo, among others. 

“I wanted to make books that show the lives of extraordinary professions which might not seem like obvious trajectories,” says Minco, who began this series as an extracurricular project at the University of Cambridge. The new collection follows Platonic Press’s well-received debut project, Portraits of Philosophers (2025), which emerged from Minco’s philosophy studies and reached its Kickstarter goal within one month of opening. It has since shipped to readers worldwide and can be ordered on Platonic Press’s website. 

Among those photographed and interviewed are Nobel Prize winner, Jim Peebles; Françoise Combes, a CNRS Gold Medal recipient and Chair of Galaxies and Cosmology at the Collège de France; Rebecca Smethurst, a Research Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society and leading science communicator; and Sara Seager, currently working with a MacArthur Fellowship Grant and North Star Distinguished Professorship. 

Each volume is a linen-bound square hardcover (24.5 × 24.5 cm), printed on matte paper with a foil-stamped cover, ribbon bookmark, headband, and tailband. Pre-orders open July 1st on our Kickstarter page [link TBA], where backers can secure all four volumes at an early-supporter price ahead of the general release. The campaign runs until 1 August 2026. RRP £45 per volume. General release September 2026.