Photo: © Sam Haskins
The recent and very worthy celebration of the moon missions has flooded our screens and print media with vintage imagery from the late sixties and early seventies. How the world-on-earth has changed! In amongst all the soul searching editorial about the future of space travel and NASA’s confused years after Apollo, I felt that not nearly enough credit went to the astronauts for their extraordinary photography. Not only did they bring back images of earth that forever changed our perception about the magnificent and fragile planet we inhabit, they also returned with long hidden treasure. A series of primordial moonscapes that are as poetic, tender and moving as any landscape ever produced by a master photographer on earth.
Lovingly restored images from NASA’s archives form a book called FULL MOON by Michael Light published in 1999 by Jonathan Cape and available in various formats from Amazon.
They may have been taken around 1970 but there is not a spec of moon dust that looks dated – these are truly windows onto eternity and a glimpse of our own planet in its infancy. Awe inspiring and enthralling.
Any serious photo library is incomplete without this book. Here’s a scan of the jacket from my scuffed copy.
Photo: © NASA
For those of you who would like a virtual visit to the moon it is now possible with the Moon in Google Earth.
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