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

exaMINING the ICONIC aND reDISCOVerING the phOtOGraphY Of 285
SpaCe expLOratION IN CONtext tO the hIStOrY Of phOtOGraphY
Truckee Desert, Nevada: 1869. (T. H. O’Sullivan/U.S. Geological Survey)
likened to 19th and 20th century landscape photography. for example, the
19th century landscape photographer t. h. O’Sullivan’s other worldly image
of an ambulance covered wagon (containing his portable darkroom) and horses
among the sand dunes of Nevada’s Carson Desert can be compared to apollo
12 astronauts pete Conrad and alan bean’s documentation of their Oceanus
procellarum landing site with the Surveyor 3 spacecraft in view. 25
In this 1869 black-and-white image, O’Sullivan positions his camera to
look back towards his footprints that lead to a team of horses attached to a
covered wagon. the mis en scene gives a sense of scale of the wagon to the
vastness of the pristine dunes and the washed out white sky. by comparison,
alan bean’s 1969 black-and-white photograph of the surface of the Moon
includes his shadow looking toward the near distant and insect-like Surveyor
3 robotic spacecraft in its 1967 landing place. the abstraction of bean’s long
shadow—postured in making this photograph—falls of against the desolate
lunar landscape of the Surveyor crater and the stark blackness of space. both
photographs give life to an otherwise lifeless landscape. 26
25. apollo 12 black-and-white photograph aS12-48-7093 taken by alan bean.
26. Other comparisons to early landscape photography emerge from studying the photographs made
by the apollo 17 crew. During the apollo 17 mission, eugene Cernan and harrison Schmitt