Space Mission
Apollo 8, 21-27 December 1968
Photographer
William Anders
Photo Description
Large format vintage chromogenic print on fiber-based Kodak paper; 10⅛ h × 13½ w in (26 × 34 cm). ‘A Kodak Paper’ watermarks to verso. [NASA image AS8-14-2383]
Essay
The celebrated view of Planet Earth rising above the bleached lunar horizon (the first taken by human beings on color film). The crew had completed three lunar orbits before emerging from the farside and witnessing this sight for the first time, surely one of the most astounding ever photographed in all of human history.
Vintage color prints of this size are exceptionally rare and were expensive to produce. The glorious nostalgia of this golden era and the patina of time is reflected in this incredible photograph.
“We were looking down at a rough, stark lunar surface with the long shadows of lunar sunset. It looked very desolate, colorless, monotonous, even unfriendly. We had no sooner taken in this somewhat disappointing scene than up popped the Earth. We all saw it at once, and there we were looking back at our Home Planet, the place where we evolved. Our Earth was quite colorful, pretty, and delicate compared to the very rough, rugged, beat-up, even boring lunar surface. I think it struck everybody that here we’d come 240,000 miles to see the Moon and it was the Earth that was really worth looking at.”
—William Anders (Schick and Van Haaften, pg. 92)