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

exaMINING the ICONIC aND reDISCOVerING the phOtOGraphY Of 309
SpaCe expLOratION IN CONtext tO the hIStOrY Of phOtOGraphY
american astronauts. 54 for example, his photograph of the expedition 8 crew
(in a closed of, rather cage-like glass room) ofers a distinct point of view of
how the russian’s present a fully suited crew—only hours from their launch to
the ISS—to space ofcials and the media. as a result, Ingalls has achieved
continued access to a space exploration infrastructure, once remote and
secretive, that harkens to de Salignac’s continuous three decade documentation
of New York City’s urban infrastructure. by examining Ingalls’s somber
photograph of russian security guards accompanying a Soyuz rocket being
transported to its baikanor launch pad, ofers not only a contrast to shuttle
launch preparations at the Kennedy Space Center in florida. It provides an
insightful observation on what the past history of Soviet era space exploration
may have looked like in the desolateness of Kazakhstan. 55
VI. the paSt, preSeNt aND fUtUre phOtOGraphIC
DOCUMeNtatION Of NaSa aS a LabOr fOrCe
I saw doing space history as investigating what space fight eforts could reveal about
a particular time and place. 56
—Margaret a. Weitekamp
the examination of space exploration photography to the history of photography
has demonstrated relationships to landscape photography, photographic
documentation, and the evolution of the snapshot. Now it is time to consider
another photographic genre, documentary portraiture and its relationships to
space exploration photography, specifcally the people that make going into
space happen. In her essay, “Critical theory as a toolbox,” Margaret Weitekamp
considers historically examining NaSa as a labor force:
Many other aspects of NaSa as a labor force remain unexamined
. . . . although the individual stories of astronauts,
fight controllers and rocket scientists have been recorded,
54. See “roads Less traveled” by the photographer Jonas bendiksen in Aperture 170, Spring 2003.
bendiksen documents the spent lower stages of russian rockets that crash (and pollute) in the
often populated and desolate areas of Kazakhstan and Siberia.
55. Since the return-to-fight of the Space Shuttle in 2005, Ingalls has also been able to frame all
subsequent Shuttle launches from the perspective of the NaSa administrator in the fring room
at Kennedy Space Center. Mission after mission, these photographs represent some of the most
prolifc unstaged documentation of a NaSa administrator and senior management during the
moments of launch in the history of american space exploration.
56. Margaret a. Weitekamp, “Critical theory as a tool box: Suggestions for Space history’s relationship
to the history Subdisciplines” in Critical Issues in the History of Spaceflight, ed. Steve Dick and roger
D. Launius (Washington, DC: National aeronautics and Space administration, 2006), p. 562.