Despite the main body of the blog being directed towards a space programme which would never materialise, many of the books and media in my collection are devoted to events which actually did take place. Following the 50th anniversary of the Moon Landing on 20th July 2019, a wealth of new books and media was made available, including the inevitable ‘previously unseen’ images from over a decade of space missions.
‘Moonshots’ by Piers Bizony is a large format coffee table style volume which details the involvement of the Hasselblad camera company with NASA and shows images taken and of the three main Hasselblad 500 EL cameras on the Apollo missions and other flights.
The specially modified medium format cameras were intended to operate in absolute vacuum of space and on the dusty surface of the Moon. Several different cameras were carried on each mission, some secured on the spacecraft and others handheld for use by the astronauts. Each had special lenses made by Zeiss, to minimise distortion and the Data camera also included the ‘reseau plate’ which aided focussing and scale, by adding a series of crosshairs to an image.
A Hasselblad SWC camera was lost during a Gemini 10 spacewalk, by astronaut Michael Collins and may still be in orbit somewhere to this day.
Such was the quality of the camera mechanism and the fineness of the optics, that images reproduced from the original negatives, for the book show a remarkable level of detail considering the extreme conditions they were taken in.
The book shows a range of images from later Gemini missions through to the Shuttle era, with quite remarkable shots from the moon missions.
The close ups of the Lunar Rover are clear enough to make out lettering on the instrumentation and photographs shot from inside the capsules are equally clear and sharp.
A beautiful book, which shows the Apollo missions in a clear and colourful presentation, in stark contrast to how they appeared on live television, decades earlier.
As a companion to the large format volume is Deborah Ireland’s small volume, ‘Hasselblad and the Moon Landing’. This discrete little book takes a similar path to Moonshots, but accompanies the images with a transcript of conversations between the astronauts and Mission Control, giving a context to each image in its place in history.
Naturally, there is one slight duplication of images in both books, but the commentary in Ireland’s book as well as the different viewpoint, lends an entirely different feel to the accounts.
In further contrast, I have a vintage Hasselblad promotional brochure dated around 1970, commemorating the company’s involvement with NASA and the Apollo missions. It also contains a flyer and postcard allowing patrons to order specific prints from the mission.
All the classic images are available, such as the 'Pale Blue Dot' and ‘One Small Step’ photo.
It’s interesting to note the difference in colour of some of these images, especially the moon surface, which appears as a pale brown on some shots and grey elsewhere.
Whether this is an artefact of the reproduction process, or fading of the ink, it’s hard to say, but it does provide another different view of a very well publicised series of events.
