Artist’s statement:

“In this series, made with the private archives of a Greek collector in 1998, the artist did not use a camera. He cut directly into the film reels and framed the space between two images, which naturally creates an inversion between the upper and lower part of the frame. No other manipulation is involved. The cutting of the first image corresponds exactly to that of the image that follows, so that there is no loss in the inversion. The series comprises 13 photographs. “.

Previously on Skandalon.

Artist statement (here):

“Unabomber: Ted Kaczynski, our home grown philosopher/terrorist, serving life in prison for crimes either committed out of dedication to a cause, or madness or both, had not only been extracted from his rural home but the home itself has been incarcerated. The cabin was shipped across the country to be used as evidence in his trial. My work looks at historical and contemporary artifacts (in this case the cabin and its site), and using the imagery and methods of architecture /archaeology it attempts to bridge the gap between the banal and the extraordinary, the cult of celebrity and the seductiveness of the infamous. This work was exhibited at the Henry Urbach Gallery in New York in January 1999, traveled to the Triannual of Photography in Hamburg, Germany in May of 1999 and was the subject of a one person exhibition at the San Jose Museum of Art in August of 2000.”

“HE WAS A TOURIST, a quarter-million miles from home. And like any traveler, he wanted to bring home a special memory.

So Apollo16 astronaut Charles M. Duke Jr. came up with a plan. Several months before his scheduled 1972 mission to the moon, Duke receveid permission from NASA to leave behind a family photograph. The picture—of Duke, wife Dorothy, and sons Charles III and Thomas—was taken by a friend in the Dukes’ Houston, Texas, backyard several week before the April 16 liftoff.

Astronaut Duke was given intensive photography training prior to the mission. He was taught about f-stops, exposure, and learned how to operate a custom Hasselblad camera. He took thousands of practice pictures and hundreds on the moon. But he never considered himself much of a photographer. “Just a point-and-shoot man,” he said decades later.

In the final hour of the final day of his three-day visit to the moon, Duke took out the shrink-wrapped family snapshot and gingerly placed it on the lunar surface, near the crater Descartes. It was a gift, his message to whoever might one day stumble upon it. He then took a snapshot of a snapshot. Evidence. A memory.” (Who We Were by Michael Williams, Richard Cahan and Nicholas Osborn, Chicago Cityfiles Press, 2008, p. 238).

Actually, he took at least three snaphotd : AS16-117-18839, AS16-117-18840 and AS16-117-18841, though the last one is clearly the best shot.

Previously on Skandalon: Apollo, Nicholas Osborn.

NASA Headquarters: “Collins, Aldrin, and Armstrong in post-flight tickertape parade in New York City. NASA Administrator Thomas Paine is seated in front of Buzz.” (September 9, 1969) Photo ID: 69-H-1421.

The New York Times (PDF): “Of A Fire On The Moon” reviewed by Morris Dickstein (January 10, 1971). Illustration by Fons Van Woerkom.

Abstruse Goose is a webcomic. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License. See the ebook.

“Cover of LIFE magazine dated 08-08-1969 w. logo & pic of American flag planted on moon.”