FULL MOON
The most thrilling of all journeys -- the missions of the Apollo
astronauts to
the surface of the Moon and back -- yielded 32,000 extraordinarily
beautiful
photographs, the record of a unique human achievement. Only a
handful of
these photographs had been published or seen until the late 1990s,
when
NASA gave permission to Michael Light to electronically scan a
selection of
the master negatives and transparencies, resulting in the sharpest,
most
spectacular images of space that we have ever seen. Michael Light
has
woven 129 of these stunning images into a single composite voyage,
a nar-
rative of breathtaking immediacy and authenticity that begins
with the
launch and is followed by a walk in space, an orbit of the Moon,
a lunar
landing and exploration, and a return the Earth with an orbit
and
splashdown.
"...compelling... Light's insightful selection of individual
images and
immensely sophisticated photo-montages do what great landscape
art
always does. Here, though, the articulation of landscape space
in the new
medium of space photography adds a layer of vibrancy that can
make
your head spin."
--Christopher Knight, Los Angeles Times
Art Review, 4 August 2000.
"Full
Moon is the closest approximation of the real thing that I've
seen since
being there. NASA needed Michael Light 30 years ago."
--Astronaut David R. Scott, Commander,
Apollo 15, August 1999.
"...If your mind wilts at
the thought of other people's vacation snaps, think
again....The cream of the crop has been picked by the artist and
photographer
Michael Light; last year, he arranged them into Full Moon -- a
large,
square volume that is almost comically beautiful. ...They were
impressive
enough on the page; at the [American Museum of Natural History's]
Rose
Center they are generously enlarged, with a corresponding increase
in
what astrophysicists term the Wow Factor.Our relationship with
unearthly
things, and hence our precarious sense of self, is transformed
by such
grandeur ... The effect of Full Moon ... is not merely to trumpet
our
scientific ability but to drive home our delightful inability
to make sense of
the universe..."
--Anthony Lane, The New Yorker,
10 April 2000.
Permanent
exhibition at Rose Center for Earth and Space,
American Museum of Natural History, New York
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