Remembering the Space Age. - Black Vault Radio Network (BVRN)

274 reMeMberING the SpaCe aGe
Explorer 1 Launch, Cape Canaveral, Florida: January 31, 1958. (NASA)
In examining the frst 50 years of iconic imagery, space exploration
photography has largely focused on the reporting of an event. according to
William Ivins, photography actually has two possible outcomes: the recording
of an event and the interpretation of that event:
the food of photographic images (since its invention)
has brought about a realization of the diference between
visual reporting and visual expression. So long as the two
things were not diferentiated in the mind of the world, the
world’s greater practical and necessary interest in reporting
had borne down artistic expression under the burden of a
demand that it be verisimilar (true or real), and that a picture
should be valued not so much for what it might be in itself as
for the titular subject matter which might be reported in it. 5
It is my intent to explore these assertions by examining the notions of
visual reporting and visual expression in the photography of space exploration
in the context of the evolving history of photography. What follows is a brief
summary of that history.
5. William M. Ivins, Jr., Prints and Visual Communication (Cambridge, Ma: the MIt press,
1969), p. 177.