A treasure trove of NASA photos, including the first selfie in the auction space | Photography

Neil Armstrong’s giant leap for humanity is up for sale at the highest bidder after a private collector auctioned off a treasure trove of NASA images from the golden age of spaceflight, including the only photograph taken at first human walking on the moon.

The July 1969 snapshot is the highlight of the collection of 2,400 vintage images in 700 lots featured on the Christie’s of London website, including the first selfie from space of Armstrong Buzz Aldrin’s Apollo 11 crew mate and the epochal photograph of Earthrise who captured the planet emerging above the moon’s horizon.

The bidding starts at £ 100 (around $ 132) for many of the photographs from the auction, which is being held online due to the coronavirus pandemic. Christie’s estimates that some of the best known images will reach over £ 50,000 ($ 66,000) individually.

“The collection is the most comprehensive private collection of NASA photographs ever presented at auction and embraces every visual milestone of the space program, from the early days of Mercury, to the technical advancements of Gemini and the lunar orbiter, to the triumphs of Apollo” Christie’s said in a press release promoting the sale.

“Through their cameras, astronauts-turned-artists have been able to convey to humanity the beauty and depth of their experience in space, forever changing the way we see ourselves and our place in the universe.”

Voyage to Another World: The Victor Martin-Malburet Photograph Collection is a chronological journey of humanity’s achievements in space starting with the early days of rocketry in the 1940s to the first color photograph of the Earth and the moon together in the same image fixed, taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft in 1977.

Collected by Martin-Malburet, a 39-year-old Frenchman who has accumulated spatial images from his adolescence when he dreamed of becoming an astronaut, parts of the collection have been displayed in various forms over the years.

More recently, images of the Apollo missions from the 1960s and early 1970s visited several prestigious art museums in Europe during the summer of 2019 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the first human moon landing.

While the fewer landmark photographs are familiar to space enthusiasts, the vast majority of the collection is being seen publicly for the first time, having been hidden in archives for decades and previously only seen by researchers at NASA’s Johnson Space Center. in Houston, Texas. , or the Russian space agency Roscosmos.

Other notable images for sale include Laika, the first dog to orbit the Earth, awaiting launch in a space capsule in the Soviet Union in 1957; the first shot of the backside of the moon taken in 1959; Blue Marble, the first complete human-eyed photograph of the Earth taken in 1972; and many from the Apollo 17 mission later that year when Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt were the last of 12 humans to set foot on the moon.

Only four are still alive, including former US Senator Schmitt, 85, and Aldrin, 90, who tweeted in June 2018 who was proud to have taken the world’s first space selfie, during his 1966 flight aboard Gemini 12. “That was an expensive selfie stick!” he wrote.

Armstrong, who uttered the historical words: “One small step for [a] man, a giant leap for humanity ”after having risen to the lunar surface on 20 July 1969, he died in 2012, at the age of 82, of complications following heart surgery. NASA plans to land the first woman and next man on the moon as early as 2024, though the estimated $ 30 billion cost of its Artemis program will come under scrutiny during President-elect Joe’s upcoming administration. Biden.

Martin-Malburet, whose father was a prominent 20th-century avant-garde art collector in Paris, bought his space collection from auctions, private collectors and dealers, and some directly from the astronauts themselves.

“Astronauts are often portrayed as great scientists and heroes, but they are rarely hailed as some of the most significant photographers of all time,” he said. “They skillfully and boldly captured photographs that immediately embraced the iconography of the sublime, inspiring awe and wonder.”

The Christie’s sale is split into two parts, with offers open until November 19th and 20th respectively.