VINTAGE SPACE PHOTOS
st(ar)t to collect
A small step for the man, but a giant leap for your collection. Space Collectibles presents a unique portfolio of rare photographies from NASA and SOVIET. These extraordinary photos capture the excitement and fascination of space exploration. These images now become part of our collective visual culture for the 20th century.
The most expensive photos ever taken
These are no ordinary snapshots of an amateur, captured with a standard camera box, but the culmination of the concentrated intelligence of many thousands of NASA employees, ingeneers and scientists. Actually, these are the most expensive photographs ever taken.
A rare mix of Scientific and artistical quality
Viewing these footprints is as close to really walking on the Moon or Mars as any of us will ever have the opportunity to do. Nowadays, we treasure these vintage prints for their aesthetic quality and as a lasting visual evidence of an era where the progress seemed so promising...
FOTOFEVER 2018
- Hanging the moon
If a collection always draws a portrait of its designer, it also underlies, however vast it may be, the idea of its completion, of a finite world within reach of the collector. We will also measure the difficulty of the "Space Collectibles" company in terms of perimeter, space, which is constantly being pushed back, by definition without limits.
So you have to proceed in fragments, quotations, metaphors and that's exactly what the hanging presented to Fotofever is about. The work on display, mainly around the moon, is a feminine tribute to the theme of the fair, alternating classical images of lunar exploration with more unexpected scientific photographs.- Without deflating the installation, we can mention a pair of X-rayed gloves answering the delicious acronym of EVA.
- To discover a large format of the lunar ground used as a training target for astronauts, an interesting example of photography that precedes the reality from which it originated.
- See a series of panoramic views of the Russian space adventure that define the 360° lunar landscape as much as they define its center, either the camera or yourself.
- And even look at some images of Mars, the very first and then others, in order to derogate a little from the moon and to continue further the exploration of the worlds through photography.
- More about vintage space photos
What is a vintage NASA photograph ?
The photographs on this website are guaranteed as vintage NASA or Soviet prints, processed by NASA’s photographic laboratories shortly after the date of the scene depicted. As contemporary, original prints of pictures taken by astronaut-photographers such as Neil Armstrong, they are very rare and difficult to find, especially in good condition.
Generally speaking, vintage NASA photographs were printed on fibre-based photographic paper, 20 x 25 cm (8 x 10 in). Most are printed on “A Kodak Paper”, a watermark which changed in 1972. Unless otherwise stated, all photographs are glossy prints on paper. The NASA reference numbers within square brackets do not appear on the prints and are provided for reference.
How many of them are there?
NASA produced master duplicates of all negatives after each mission, while the originals were locked away in cold store. From the master duplicates photographs were printed and distributed for the use of NASA’s own scientists and public relations department. In subsequent years, NASA destroyed many of these original prints as they were archived on the internet and true vintage prints are subsequently hard to find. Vintage NASA photographs are not ‘editioned’ in any conventional sense, and there is an unknown but certainly finite number of them in open circulation.
Because NASA had several processing centres and each print was produced on demand, no two are ever identical, meaning each one is unique. The location of the red NASA number, the presence or not of a purple caption on the verso, any annotations or other marks, the ageing of the colour and the condition of the print can all vary to a significant degree.
We only ever stock one print of a particular image at any time and, generally speaking, once it's gone, it's gone. While we refresh our inventory periodically, there can be a substantial wait to replace most images, if they can even be replaced at all.
What are the red (or black/blue) NASA numbers?
These typically refer to the mission name or number, such as AS11 for Apollo 11, the magazine number and frame number. The majority of prints have a red, blue or black NASA number printed near the image on the front of the print, but by no means all of them. The unique NASA number for each image can be used to search for further information on NASA's websites.
What are the purple stamps on the back of some photographs?
Some, roughly a third, are printed on the reverse in purple ink with the NASA logo, the issuing centre, the identification number (mission-film magazine-frame), the date the picture was taken and an explanatory caption. Colour (chromogenic) prints on heavier weight paper are commonly blank on the back, as were certain print runs made for internal use or for the agency’s subcontracting firms.