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

316 reMeMberING the SpaCe aGe
Technician at the engine base of shuttle orbiter Discovery. Kennedy Space Center:
2006. (©Michael Soluri)
(Opf) at the Kennedy Space Center, he is juxtaposed by one of the three main
Shuttle engine insert positions. In scope and scale, I sought to explore the
workspace of the people whose day job is working on a spaceship. In another
exploration, I sought to document the engineers and technicians integrating
the New horizons spacecraft in the pre-clean room at the Goddard Space
flight Center. Working in a near sterile environment, these two electrical
engineers are juxtaposed with a rolling cart of their tools and instruments. In
both explorations, I sought the dignity of the space worker in context to his
working environment.
While examining the photography of NaSa’s labor force, it is impossible
to ignore the photography of the workplace itself. John Sexton has made
Kennedy Space Center his industrial landscape. his highly crafted approach to
black-and-white photography is informed by the history of landscape and
documentary photography and his close working relationship with ansel
adams. 64 Sexton’s documentation of the Space Shuttle over a period of about
64. Sexton was ansel adams’s technical and photographic assistant from 1979 until adams’s
death in 1984.