Iit was one of history’s monumental moments – but if John Glenn had not stopped by the supermarket to pick up a Contax camera and a roll of 35mm film on the way to the Friendship 7, there might have been no visual document of that. The photographs taken by the American astronaut from the window of his capsule while orbiting the Earth on February 20, 1962, provided an unprecedented testimony of the Mercury Project’s first orbital mission. The Soviet Union may have beaten the Americans in the race to human spaceflight – but the Americans have now taken the first galactic color photographs.
The photos are also, says the German gallery, Daniel Blau, “the most expensive photos ever taken. Billions of dollars were spent to get them.” Blau has an original print of Glenn’s first photograph taken in space on display at this year’s Paris photoalongside a cache of rare Nasa photographic prints – many of them never before seen in public, most of them by unknown scientists and astronauts.
“Then, Nasa didn’t provide cameras to astronauts,” says Blau, “so in a way it was Glenn’s private photo.” Although motivated by science, Glenn’s image communicates the inescapable mystery of space. A warm glowing orb of light expands from the center of the frame; Flashes of light blazed against the void of deep darkness, dancing like “fireflies” as Glenn described them. They must have been terrifying to see. In fact, the sparks appear to be condensation.
At a speed of 28,000 km per hour, mankind has managed to get into space, but has not yet designed a photographic machine powerful enough to keep up with the journey. Lacking much visual information or detail, Glenn’s photograph perhaps reveals less about space and becomes a totem of human ambition. Glenn would later attach a personal caption and warning to it: “I assure you that a picture can never capture the splendor of the actual view.”
Blau began trading in vintage NASA prints in the 1990s. “The space race and the cold war were the defining forces of the second half of the 20th century, and of course my generation remembers all the key moments.” Some of the pictures were published at the time, but original prints are harder to come by. “Those scientists and others involved in the missions passed on personal archives to their children, and now grandchildren, and so much material is still coming to market. So it was only logical for me to look for the best photos and start dealing with them.”
At Paris Photo, crowds gathered around a series of six silver gelatin prints from 1948, looking down on the Rio Grande from a V-2 rocket at an altitude of 73,000 feet. Also on display was man’s first close-up photograph of Mars, taken in 1965, and a panoramic photograph of Earth which was the first shot of our planet as seen from the moon. The latter was not taken by human hands, but rather transmitted by a radio signal from an unmanned mission in August 1966. It was then stitched together pixel by pixel into a single image at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
By 1979, the Voyager interstellar probe had made it possible to get better pictures of the planets, and an image of Jupiter and its four moons suspended like marbles in an onyx atmosphere is particularly stunning.
An impressive large-scale mosaic of the pockmarked surface of Mercury from 1974 is “the only one on such a large scale I’ve ever seen”, says Blau. “It was probably produced, just like the Voyager pictures of Mars, for a Nasa presentation.” The photo – which shows only part of the solar system’s smallest planet – gives another glimpse of what lies beyond our grasp and control.
By the late 70s, photography had a more central role in missions and the advancement of space science. “Nasa, then as now, depended on public funding, and with Glenn’s color photographs taken on his orbit around the Earth, it became clear to Nasa that the best and most positive way to show his achievements was through photography, ” said Blau. “Obviously the scientific side of things is the driving force, but pictures tell the immediate story.”
Blau’s images appeared the day after the US presidential election. He says he wanted to remind visitors of a “positive common effort by many nations”. They are certainly humble. “Perhaps nothing better embodies the blend of mystical awe and natural mastery that makes up the human condition,” muses Blau. “Man, escaping from his earthly confines, sees and records things that have never been seen or recorded before – the impossible.”
