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Monday, November 05, 2007
Neil Armstrong’s Historic First Words on Moon, ‘Holy Living F—’
Context: here. I love that particular Onion headline; it articulates something few historical accounts manage to convey, the sheer gobsmacking extraordinariness of the Apollo achievement. But it contains an error. D’you see the famous photo of an astronaut on the lunar surface reproduced there with the legend ‘Neil Armstrong on the surface of the fucking moon’? That’s not Neil. That’s Buzz Aldrin.
It is indeed one of the great photos of the twentieth century.
What is so very cool about this picture, apart from the fact that it shows a human being actually standing on the fucking moon, is its balance of pure and subtle formal composition. Aldrin appears to be leaning a little to the left (a compensation occasioned by the size of his backpack pulling his centre-of-gravity to the right); and this, together with the sewed-in rod along the top of the US flag stiffening it enough to look as though it is fluttering, impossibly, in the vacuum, give the slightly unsettling expression that a strong wind is blowing from the right, even though we know it isn’t, and couldn’t be.
But there are two things in particular that I love about this image.
One is that, although it is a full colour photograph, it appears to mix colour photography (the flag) and black and white photography (everything else). It’s a striking balance, and gives it a pleasantly unreal or special effect-feel. Actually, of course, it is perfectly real; it’s just that the moon is a black and white environment. But straddling that gap from b&w to colour is one of the narratives of the twentieth-century ... photography, cinema, television, each after each stepping across from (in effect) background to flag. It’s nice the way the photo of Buzz, formally and in itself, contrues that progression.
Two is the way this image—so artfully centred (artfully off-centred) on the American flag there—seems on closer inspection to represent a sort of visual riff upon the American flag. Red, white and blue stars and bars draw the eye. The eye then slides to the black, cloudless night sky, which of course we would expect to be filled with stars … but which isn’t. The US flag implies a quartering, with the stars filling the top right quarter and the bars the remaining space. But then we clock that the flag here is reversed, which causes us mentally to flip it about. And then we note that the image itself, in its b&w way, also embodies a distorted quartering. Separate out the flag and astronaut, just for a moment; regard them temporarily as superimposed on a black-and-grey inverted rendering of Old Glory. Do you see it? The long black horizontal bar of the lunar sky; and underneath it the thinner horizontal strip of the Lunar Lander’s shadow, and beneath that the two even thinner strips of black, one each for Aldrin’s two legs (on the same horizontal axis there is another shadow on the left hand side of the image, presumably of another astronaut off-picture to the left); and beneath them there is the truncated black strip of shadow cast by that rock in the bottom right. The A-frame of the Lunar Lander’s strut mimics the triangular cut shadow makes out of the stars of the flag itself. A scattering of footprints (each of which contains, in miniature, the motif of horizontal bars) spills from the bottom left across to the right. It is as if the components of the flag had been bleached of colour, converted into black and grey, bent out of shape, spilled and broken into the backdrop. What I admire, in other words, is the formal relationship between the bright, colourful, idealised little flag a little up-and-right from the image’s centre, and the larger, dour, black-and-grey, tumbling out and pulling apart inversion of that design that is the backdrop to the image itself. Neat.
Comments
Not to mention that many of the lines in the photo aim the eye toward the flag: Aldrin’s shadow, the footsteps, the leg of the lander, and other shadows. It is a nice photo, though to my eye a bit cluttered and not as well composed as it could be—I’d crop off a bit from the right edge, and what’s that shiny object on the middle of the left edge? Anyone know if this is cropped?
I’m sure you know that this photo is a prime exhibit for conspiracy theorists who believe the moon landings were faked. Why does the flag appear to be waving? I read an explanation once, but I’ve forgotten it.
Nice post! I’ve responded to it over at my Grizzly@Adams blog.
An interesting photo, and interesting remarks, Adam. I’ve been thinking alot about photos lately, and what and how they mean. For example, I’ve taken a good many photos of the Empire State Building, but they’re not your standard Iconic Building in the Big City photos. Because I’m not in that big city when I take the photos. I’m across the Hudson river in Jersey City, so I’m, I don’t know, say, 4 or 5 km from the building. Depending on where I’m standing, what I’m shooting, and whether or not I’m using my telephoto lens, the Empire State Building may just be a bit player in the background, or it might be small, but centered, or large and centered or off to one side. It may be surrounded by the standard NYC buildings, or those might be occluded by Jersey-side buildings, or even trees. But the building is always that iconic building.
But what would those photos mean to someone who doesn’t recognize That Building for What it Is and whatever, therefore, it Might Represent? I don’t know. Formally, the pictures are unchanged. But, for me, they are politically charged by virtue of what that building is, and the relationship between THAT and Jersey City as servant, repairman, bedroom, to NYC.
In the case of the Aldrin shot, formally it is nice, all that B&W contrasting with RW&B, etc. as you pointed out, etc. & I agree with Gerrold about the need for more cropping.
But the overwhelming thing about that picture is what it represents and what it represents as well. The big thing is the it’s up there on the moon. And then there is the politics as well. The first all but overwhelms the formal deficiencies. And the formal excellence, color vs. B&W is, as you say, bound up in what the photo represents at that level.
But What It Represents is not obvious in the picture itself. You have to bring that knowledge to the picture. And so with the political resonance on top of that. But, as Gerrold points out, there are those who think this photo was taken in a studio somewhere on earth. They don’t believe the standard narrative and so must go to considerable pains to concoct an alternative one. Whence their disbelief? I’d guess it’s political in one sense or another, rather than technological.
Getting back to my Empire State Building photos, chances are that, when you (the general person) look at them, you’re not going to know that they were taken from Jersey City, because most likely you’ve never heard of Jersey City. You may not even infer that they were taken across the Hudson. But in some specific settings, you might pick up some, shall we say, oppositional or skeptical resonance.
BTW, here’s a link to those photos:
http://flickr.com/photos/stc4blues/sets/72157601586765957/
Gerrold asks: “Anyone know if this is cropped?” A little rummaging around the internet and I discover that, yes indeed, the image I copied into this post is cropped. You can see (what I take to be) the uncropped version here; it’s higher res too, so you can see more detail in the lunar surface.
It spoils my argument a little by including another colour; the gold of the lander’s cladding. But in another sense it makes more plain the way the composition is a delicious and effective muddle of stars and blotches, quartered roughly in a sort of deconstruction and playing-around-with of the aesthetic logic of the American flag.
I take the point about the number of lines leading the eye towards the flag; that’s certainly a feature of the composition.
Nice photos, Bill.
This moon shot is a tricky one, in terms of its ideological loading. I suppose I could imagine that a US citizen’s view of it is going to be heavily overwritten by the ideological weight of the flag itself. I’m aware that the US flag signifies furiously, on ideological and political terms, in America. The Union flag, by comparison, doesn’t have the same resonance for us Brits. But as a Brit, an image like this is as likely to get me thinking of ‘we came in peace for all mankind’, rather than ticking the sorts of specifically national boxes the Empire State Building ticks.
Another thing: looking at the photo, I’m trying to work out why everything casts such pronounced shadows except the flag/flagpole. Why not the pole? Putting the risible conspiracy theories on one side, I’m thinking: is there a sort of depression of declivity just behind Aldrin’s right boot? Is that where the shadow is lying? Can anybody else see that?
Interesting remark about the flag, Adam. Of course, the moon landing happened at the height of the Vietnam war, and the flag - and flag burning - was very political here in the US. I understand your remark about‘we came in peace for all mankind’, and that’s how I’d like to read the event. At the same time, I doubt that the Apollo programming would have been funded without the Cold War competition with the Russians.
Or, since many involved certainly were doing it as a technological-scientific achievement on behalf of humankind, the Cold War was ON, and Cold War rhetoric was certainly part of how this thing got funded. Sputnik put a real scare into the USofA and NASA is one result of that. Whether or not it would have happened anyhow, who knows?
re the lack of any visible shadow cast by the flagpole: I think the flagpole is so narrow that the umbra is very short. See here for a diagram explaining why.
re the ideological loading, not just of the flag, but of the photo itself: I’m wondering if NASA (or its PR people) had earlier coached Armstrong on how to set up what was obviously bound to be a tremendously significant photo in the same way it had scripted Armstrong’s famous “One small step” words.
The apparent lack of shadow for the pole and flag is interesting. I suppose the flag is high enough that its shadow is out of frame (we only see shadows of Aldrin’s legs, after all). But why no shadow for the pole? It might be there but broken up by the uneven ground. It might just be very, very thin and so hardly noticeable (the shadows from Aldrin’s legs are very thin). Could part of the shadow have fallen on Aldrin, out of sight of the camera? The high-res version doesn’t seem to make this puzzle(?) easier to figure out. I’d bet the apparent lack of shadow is bandied about by the conspiracy theorists. I spent on moment on Wikipedia looking into this, and didn’t find specific mention of the flag pole shadow, but did find mention of a Dittmar poll that says 27 percent of college students have doubts that man ever stepped foot on the moon. Good grief.
Anyway, as others have said, this photo is amazing for reasons besides the purely aesthetic. Aesthetically, I prefer the bottom photo on this page:
http://www.robotonwheels.com/2006/01/25/the-second-most-famous-astronaut/
I know, I know, it’s not set on the moon, but damn.
Call for Papers
THE APOLLO PROGRAM Area
2008 Film & History Conference
“Film & Science: Fictions, Documentaries, and Beyond”
October 30-November 2, 2008
Chicago, Illinois
http://www.uwosh.edu/filmandhistory
Second-Round <http://www.uwosh.edu/filmandhistorySecond-Round> Deadline: May 1, 2008
AREA: Film and the Apollo Program
The Apollo missions to explore the Moon generated some of the most
iconic images of the 20th century, from the sublime (the Earth rising
above the Moon’s horizon) to the ridiculous (lunar golfing). This
area will examine the many uses of Apollo imagery, from photographs
of the lunar surface to footage and narratives of astronauts,
spacecraft, and other astronomical phenomena associated with this era
in space exploration. Topics might include the following:
• Uses of the television coverage of lunar exploration
• Dramatizations (e.g., Apollo 13)
• Promotional films produced by NASA about the Apollo program
• Apollo images and propaganda, during and after the Cold War
• Documentaries produced in all media, from television to IMAX
• Experimental filmmakers’ uses of Apollo imagery
• Evocations or revisions of Apollo imagery in science fiction
and other film genres
• Conspiracy theories that the lunar landings were faked ( e.g.,
Capricorn One or more recent TV “documentaries")
Papers treating any of the causes or implications of Apollo-related
visual media will be considered. Please submit via e-mail proposals
of 200 words by May 1, 2008, to the area chair:
Dr. Allison Whitney
Marion L. Brittain Post-doctoral Fellow
The Georgia Institute of Technology
Atlanta, Georgia
Phone: 404-894-1024
<mailto:allison.whitney@lcc.gatech.edu>
Panel proposals for up to four presenters are also welcome, but each
presenter must submit his or her own paper proposal. Deadline for
second-round proposals: May 1, 2008
This area, comprising multiple panels, is a part of the 2008 biennial
Film & History Conference, sponsored by The Center for the Study of
Film and History. Speakers will include founder John O’Connor and
editor Peter C. Rollins (in a ceremony to celebrate the transfer to
the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh); Wheeler Winston Dixon, author
of Visions of the Apocalypse, Disaster and Memory, and Lost in the
Fifties: Recovering Phantom Hollywood; Sidney Perkowitz, Charles
Howard Candler Professor of Physics at Emory University and author of
Hollywood Science: Movies, Science, & the End of the World; and
special-effects legend Stan Winston, our Keynote Speaker. For
updates and registration information about the upcoming meeting, see
the Film & History website ( http://www.uwosh.edu/filmandhistory <http://www.uwosh.edu/filmandhistory> ).