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

exaMINING the ICONIC aND reDISCOVerING the phOtOGraphY Of 321
SpaCe expLOratION IN CONtext tO the hIStOrY Of phOtOGraphY
While there have been many high-end picture books that have published
the iconic and familiar photography of space exploration, few have been edited to
refect an astronaut’s insight while in space. One title that conveys the astronaut’s
perspective is The Home Planet. 68 the book remains one of the earliest “cofee table”
books to cohesively portray an astronaut’s photographic exploration of earth and
the Moon.the book brought together aesthetically compelling images (considering
lighting, angle, composition) chosen from not just the american space program
but also, for the frst time since the space era began, from the then Soviet space
exploration photography.the result is a book with visual continuity with images
of earth and earth-related phenomena (weather, river and ocean patterns, and
geologic formations). the photographs were mostly taken by astronauts in orbit
around earth and in orbit or on the surface of the Moon.What distinguishes this
volume today is the quality of the editing.Complementing the minimalist design,
layout and superb printing is the bilingual fow of frst-person narrative in a variety
of languages like, english, russian, German, french, hindu, and bulgarian.
hardly a decade later, the landscape photographer Michael Light published
his book Full Moon in 1999. Light’s book portrays the Moon as landscape and
examines the sublime quality of light and detail from project apollo’s space
fight photography. Over a period of four years, Light researched and edited a
substantial number of in-fight photographs made from project’s Gemini and
apollo (1965–1972). by gaining access to NaSa’s photo archive, he was able to
make the frst drum-scanned digital fles from essentially second generation
copies of the original fight flms. 69 the resulting editing and juxtaposition of
superbly reproduced full page black-and-white and color images created an
aesthetic fow of a journey to the Moon and back via the historic timeline of
manned spacefight, beginning with the explosive freball ignition of the Saturn
apollo’s fve rocket engines and ending with a view of the pacifc Ocean as seen
through the window of a just landed apollo module.
the subtext of Light’s editing and editorial structure suggests themes of
exploration and discovery. the quality of light and shadow in the photographs
is signifcant. as a result, the actual quality of detail found on the printed page
is stunning. this quality is impossible to appreciate in the familiar and iconic
photography published by NaSa and the print media. even Light’s handling
of the iconic apollo images discussed earlier (for example, the before and after
photographs of aldrin’s boot print in the lunar dust) reveals a tonal range, and
subtly of detail and texture that is impossible to draw out from the same images
in familiar consumer print media.
Of particular interest to the author is the lighting captured by the apollo
astronauts. as explorers carrying cameras, the apollo astronauts were similar to
68. See The Home Planet, ed. Kevin W. Kelly for the association of Space explorers, reading,
Massachusetts (reading, Ma:addison-Wesley publishing Company, 1988).
69. Michael Light,“the Skin of the Moon,” Full Moon (New York, NY:alfred a. Knopf, 1999).