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

322 reMeMberING the SpaCe aGe
the pioneer photographers of the 19th century who, with their cameras, were
responding to the unknowns of the american West. however, unlike the physical
conditions of the 19th century photographers, the Gemini and apollo crews were
responding to the new and unexplored by photographing their experiences inside
their spacecraft and outside in the vacuum of space. they were able to capture
qualities of light and shadow that were impossible to experience or capture on
earth. Commenting on the lunar landscape, Light puts it this way:
Issues of big and small comprise but one half of the sublime
landscape; for me, the other is the rule of light itself.
Concerns about light always lurked behind all the others that
drove my selection, and so to me the (NaSa) archive’s most
important images will always remain the black-and-white
ones, in part because their fner grain carries a higher visual
acuity and renders more detail, but mostly because of the
way they distill light in a world without air. 70
as a result, not only does the handheld black-and-white photography
from apollo’s 12 and 14 through 17 ofer further aesthetic reexamination, the
imagery from the automated metric and panoramic cameras (installed in the
service module) also ofer opportunities in visual exploration and discovery.
the writer, flm maker, and photographer Michael benson chose a diferent
approach in conveying the sense of light, scale and landscape in space exploration
photography.benson researched and edited the still imagery that had been captured
and beamed back to earth by the robotic exploration of our solar system. published
in 2003, Beyond, Visions of the Interplanetary Probes often displays rediscovered
photographs that have never been registered on a negative. 71 the subject matter
is most of our solar system’s inner and outer planets, their Moons, asteroids and
the Sun.the images were taken by earth and Moon orbiting, and interplanetary
robotic space probes like OrbView,terra, aqua, Galileo, Lunar Orbiter, Magellan,
Solar and heliospheric Observatory (SOhO),Viking Orbiters and its landers, Near
earth asteroid rendezvous (Near),Voyager and the hubble Space telescope.
benson addresses his experience researching and editing the images. the
results of this became a kind of philosophical treatise on the history of the
photographic imaging systems used in these robotic probes. benson’s ideas on
the nature of art in these images become relevant here:
I meditate on the fact that questions of authorship would
tend to disqualify a space probe’s pictures from serious
70. Michael Light,“the Skin of the Moon,” Full Moon (New York, NY:alfred a. Knopf, 1999).
71. Michael benson, Beyond-Visions of the Interplanetary Probes (New York, NY: harry N. abrams,
2003) p. 295.