An amazing collection of prints taken from an unpublished private collection that includes NASA photos showing astronauts at the Moon and in space, will be auctioned on Thursday, 26 February at Bloomsbury Auctions, London. For everyone to view, the prints are on display at Mallet Antiques in London. Then they will be up for auction in just two weeks. The first photograph of space photography was taken in October 24, 1946, by a V2 rocket that flew 65 miles high above the Earth’s atmosphere. This photograph is the start of an era when human beings and machines left the Earth’s gravity to explore outer space. Lot Number. 325: Portrait of Buzz Aldrin with the photographer (Neil Armstrong) and the Lunar Module reflected in his gold-plated visor, Apollo 11, July 1969. Dreweatts & Bloomsbury Auctions. This huge collection includes more than 600 photos and covers everything from Mercury’s early days to Gemini, the Lunar Orbiter and Apollo. Many iconic photos from space exploration’s golden age are included in the auction, along with rare, almost unheard-of photographs, such as the last clear image of Neil Armstrong standing on the Moon. Science fiction was born when Mr. Armstrong said, “That’s one tiny step for (*] man, but one great leap for humanity.” Lot no. 250: First photograph of a man (Niel Armstrong) standing on the surface of another world, Apollo 11, July 1969. (Image: Dreweatts & Bloomsbury Auctions) For nearly two decades after Apollo 11, the only photographs known of Armstrong on the Moon were some grainy TV camera images and the 16-mm motion picture camera. NASA was under the impression that all photographs taken on the Moon’s surface were by Buzz Aldrin. This belief continued until the historic NASA image of Aldrin was discovered in the NASA archives at Houston. The image had been there for almost twenty years, unrecognized. NASA released only a small portion of astronaut photos to the media and the public after each mission. Rest of them were only available to authorized researchers at the Manned Spacecraft Center archives in Houston. These previously unaccessible photos make up the 600+ current collection. They all have original NASA stamps and ID numbers, as well as captions. Lot no. Lot No. 2: First photograph taken from space, 24 October 1946. Dreweatts & Bloomsbury Auctions. Sarah Wheeler from Bloomsbury Auctions took a new look at the Moon Head of Photographs. She said that until digitally launching the entire NASA photographic archive online, many of the photographs in the auction had been hidden to the public for over ten years. The mosaics are real, boots-on the-ground panoramics that Apollo astronauts took as they explored the moon’s landscape. This was especially true for the collection. This collection contains photographs by John Glenn (the first American astronaut to orbit Earth) and Eugene Cernan (the last human to walk on the Moon). Richard Underwood was the Apollo photo supervisor and said that Cernan took the following portrait of Harrison Schmitt (his Apollo co-pilot) with the Earth over the American flag in December HTML1. Cernan added, “I captured all of it. The Earth, the Moon. The man. And the country.” This picture is a proud one. It’s also available for purchase. This photograph was taken in 1966 by Buzz Aldrin during an Extra Vehicular Activities (EVA). Ed White’s personal album contains photos from his spacewalk with Gemini 4 in 1965.. Lot no. 80: First ‘selfie’ (Buzz Aldrin) in space, Gemini 12, November 1966. Dreweatts & Bloomsbury Auctions. Ms. Wheeler stated that these photographs go beyond being documentary. Many of them are just simply stunning. These photographs are a reminder of a golden age of photography, where a handful of men traveled to unknown places to take awe-inspiring photos. The photographs were printed on Kodak high-quality paper shortly after their capture. Experts believe the pictures will go for between PS300 to PS10,000 ($457 to $15,233). Refer to: Dreweatts & Bloomsbury auctions, Catalogue: “From the Earth and the Moon: Vintage NASA Photos”.
