Pictures from NASA’s photo-archive, selected by artist and photographer Michael Light.
You plunge straight into the pictures other than a stark, dignified double page spread recording the names of the astronauts, no text appears until near the end. Captions appear alongside thumbnail reproductions of the images in the last few pages, leaving you to be carried away by what you see as you turn the page. Alan Shepard is said to have wept when he looked upon the Earth from the Moon; these pictures will stimulate similar emotion. The spectacle is profoundly moving, even for those who think they’ve seen a space picture or two.
1999 marked the thirtieth anniversary of the first Moon landing and Full Moon is one of the best records of this event. Rightly described as a milestone publication for the millennium by its publishers, it is an essential book for anybody even slightly interested in flight, space travel or photography. Incredibly, it is already being sold off at reduced price in Waterstones. Philip Whiteman.
