The Metropolitan Museum in NYC is currently presenting “Apollo’s Muse The Moon in the Age of Photography”. Commemorating the 50th anniversary of the TV broadcast of NASA’s Apollo 11 mission this exhibition early photographs as well as prints books and ephemera.
This is a page from Charles F Blunt’s 1942 book “The Moon’s Phases ,in Lectures on Astronomy;Beauty of the Heavens; a Pictorial Display of the Astronomical Phenomena of the Universe”.In the center of the diagram Blunt has placed a circle representing the moon divided into two sections. Encircling this moon are two concentric rings of twelve circles
For me one of the most impressive displays was the 19th century astronomical photography. All 71 plates of Maurice Loewy and Pierre Puiseux’s “Photographic Atlas of the Moon”. Here is one wall of the installation.
The multitude of perspectives on the same spherical orb is an elegant exploration of it’s geometry.
Susan Happersett
fibonaccisusan 