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

exaMINING the ICONIC aND reDISCOVerING the phOtOGraphY Of 323
SpaCe expLOratION IN CONtext tO the hIStOrY Of phOtOGraphY
consideration as works of art—even though its scientifc
discoveries are undeniable, and attributed. Yet those same
questions are very much present in the rarefed art-world air
these days. even ansel adams was only ansel adams part of
the time. Like most photographers, he shot a lot of pictures
and then selected those few that today constitute the work
we connect with his name . . . What’s left is choice—curatorship.
and I would argue that these pictures qualify for
another reason: their mysterious, Leonardo-esque smile. 72
One can look at a range of benson’s choices and make associations
between a probe’s photography and that of a photographic master. for example,
Voyager’s fyby of Jupiter takes on a modernist approach with its abstract colors
and organic shapes. Next, there is Magellan’s Minor White-like-exploration of
Venus. the Synthetic aperture radar (Sar) imagery is all black-and-white,
and White only worked in black-and-white. also, Magellan captured unusual
surface features, the quality of which are reminiscent to some of White’s more
interpretive work of objects and landscapes. and then there is the black-andwhite
exploration of Mars by the Viking Orbiters and Mars Global Surveyors
that recalls the work of ansel adams, edward Weston, and aaron Siskind.
benson’s choices also reinforce the notion that the photography from space
exploration can be researched, edited and curated in a way that refects the
artistic proclivities of an author-curator.
While benson and Light sought to convey various editorial approaches
to the aesthetic possibilities of robotic and astronaut space fight photography,
there are also artists who appropriate—take, borrow or are inspired by—space
exploration in combination with photography, its related imaging technologies
and even art. the work of the Spanish artist Joan fontcuberta, for example, is
distinctive for its humor, inventiveness and intellect. by experimenting with
computer mapping software—used by cartographers to create realistic threedimensional
models and maps—fontcuberta has created images of unimagined
landscapes that look as though they were made by earth orbiting satellites.
Scanning examples of iconic paintings from artists like rousseau, turner,
Cezanne, or Dali and feeding a digitized fle from one of the paintings into
the mapping software fontcuberta achieved results in a fully rendered, realistic
landscape of mountains, hills, valleys, rivers and lakes. the landscapes are, of
course, visual fction as experienced in his book fttingly entitled, Landscapes
without Memory. 73 In context, fontcuberta’s fctional landscapes have an uncanny
72. Ibid., p. 304.
73. Joan fontcuberta, Landscapes Without Memory (New York, NY:aperture, 2005).