From the «in an underground Hollywood lab LOL» department:
Title: ‘The most expensive photos ever taken’: the space shots that changed humanity’s view of itself
Author: Charlotte Jansen
Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2024 14:39:12 +0000
Link: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2024/nov/14/photos-from-space-that-changed-humanitys-view-of-itself
Podcast Download URL: https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/aae09d09a2735c1364557f6e98a79955dac0c480/17_257_1917_1150/master/1917.jpg?width=460&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=e902e6e6a6dadee45a0de3be61327659

Taken at 28,000km/h and costing billions of dollars, the first ever photos
taken by astronauts are on show at Paris Photo. For Nasa print dealer Daniel
Blau, they are proof that nothing is impossible when nations collaborate

It was one of history’s monumental moments – but if John Glenn[1] hadn’t popped
into the supermarket to pick up a Contax camera and a roll of 35mm film on his
way to board the Friendship 7, there may have been no visual document of it.
The photographs the American astronaut took from the window of his capsule as
he orbited Earth on 20 February 1962 gave an unprecedented testimony of the
Mercury Project’s first orbital mission. The Soviet Union might have beaten the
Americans in the race to human spaceflight – but the Americans had now shot the
first galactic colour photographs.

The pictures are also, German gallerist Daniel Blau points out, “the most
expensive photographs ever taken. Billions of dollars were spent to get them.”
Blau exhibited an original print of Glenn’s first picture taken in space at
this year’s Paris Photo[2], alongside a cache of rare Nasa photographic prints
– many of them never publicly seen before, most of them by unknown scientists
and astronauts.
Continue reading...[3]

Links:
[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/dec/08/john-glenn-obituary (link)
[2]: https://danielblau.com/paris-photo-2024 (link)
[3]: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2024/nov/14/photos-from-space-that-changed-humanitys-view-of-itself (link)