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

exaMINING the ICONIC aND reDISCOVerING the phOtOGraphY Of 277
SpaCe expLOratION IN CONtext tO the hIStOrY Of phOtOGraphY
Fall of Richmond, Virginia: 1865. (Mathew Brady/Library of Congress)
and just two years into the Space age in 1959 and approximately 95 years
since Mathew brady’s exact and reproducible photographic images of the Civil
War, the frst still photograph from the backside of the Moon was radioed to
earth by the Soviet Union’s robotic space probe, Luna III. 11 the resulting series
of images, as crude as they were, added another element to the genre of space
exploration photography: images captured and transmitted to earth by robotic
space probes of interplanetary objects and solar system phenomena.
Over the next 48 years since Luna III, the scope and scale of space
exploration photography has evolved from the combination of interplanetary
and earth-orbiting robotic spacecraft, earth-based telescopes, and human
spacefights. the methodical recording of space exploration technology, the
engineering and construction of spacecraft, and the day-to-day operations of
space centers and aerospace corporations (recorded by both NaSa and its
contractors) has augmented this robotic imagery. the sheer quantity of these
images is considerable. Some of these photographs are classifed or restricted
and only available to engineers, scientists, and NaSa administrators. Others,
depending on varying degrees of governmental policy, are classifed, edited,
catalogued, and released into the public domain for use by the media, academia,
and the general public. Of these released images, they can be said to have
become symbolic in the reporting and representation of space exploration.
128 years before the apollo 8 astronauts became the frst humans to photograph earth rising
over the Moon’s surface in 1968.
11. between 1861 and 1865, less than 25 years after the invention of the photograph, (not much
more than the time between the launch of Sputnik and the frst launch of the Space Shuttle),
Mathew brady’s photographic record of the american Civil War—documentary images of
people,battlefelds,and the tools of war—became a frst.his photographs eternalized the damage,
carnage, and technology of that war for generations to come.