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Apollo 11 Hasselblad image from film magazine 44/V - LM

Apollo 11 Hasselblad image from film magazine 44/V - LM

ABOUT THIS ARTWORK 

The photo is from the Apollo 11 space mission, the first to achieve a moon landing on July 20, 1969. Apollo 11 is burned into our collective memory, although there were 14 missions during the Apollo Program (1961-1972). The Project Apollo Archive, created in 1999, contains 8,400 super high-resolution images from the Apollo missions, a project undertaken by historian and space enthusiast Kipp Teague. Around 2004, Johnson Space Center began re-scanning the original Apollo Hasselblad camera film magazines.  These images were processed—adjusting color and brightness levels, and reducing the images in size to about 2350 x 2350 pixels (equivalent to 300 dpi, or dots per inch)—for inclusion in The Project Apollo Archive and NASA’s Apollo Lunar Service Journal.  

 

ARTWORK DETAILS

  • Artwork title: Apollo 11 Hasselblad image from film magazine 44/V - LM
  • Edition: Limited edition of 1000
  • Proof of Ownership: Certification on the Ethereum blockchain under the ERC1155 protocol. Each artwork is delivered privately and directly to collectors as non-fungible tokens (NFTs) that guarantee proof of ownership.
  • Format: Pieces consist of PNG files sized 2160x3840 pixels - 150 dpi.
  • Medium: Photography
  • Hardware used: APOLLO-11 Hasseblad 500 EL Data Camera
  • Contract Address: 0x495f947276749ce646f68ac8c248420045cb7b5e
  • ID: 2749212597480566...

 

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Space photography began in 1962 with John Glenn, an astronaut on the early Mercury program. He thought the first orbital spaceflight deserved a few snaps and used a 35mm camera he bought at a drugstore. With Apollo, photography had become an important research tool. The Apollo 11 crew used various cameras, especially medium-format 70mm Hasselblads with film three to four times as large as a standard 35mm frame (chest-mounted with oversize controls to enable use with bulky gloves). And what about the color of the moon? As to the moon itself, the astronauts said mouse grey, mouse brown, concrete, etc. In the digitization process, Kipp Teague went for a neutral gray. But since all color film shot on the moon was made for an Earth-based chromatic spectrum of light, not the vacuum of the moon, the film “saw” color differently in space than it would on Earth. In some cases, Teague made objects with known colors look right. Many scientists argued for not even taking the color film to the moon because of its inaccuracy, but they also recognized its great public relations value.

 

COLLECTION CREDITS

  • Historical curatorship: HARI - Historical Art Research Institute (HARI Editions)
  • Artwork: Kipp Teague
  • Year of original publication: 1999
  • Post-production: HARI - Historical Art Research Institute (HARI Editions)
  • Digital art supervisor: Marie-Lou Desmeules
  • Editorial: Braden Phillips
  • Historical research: Evangelos Rosios, Braden Phillips
  • Executive production: Victor Zabrockis

 

RIGHTS OVERVIEW

  • Source of artwork: NASA, The Project Apollo Archive, Flickr
  • Underlying work rights: CC0
  • Digital copyrights: CC0

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