National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), American
Blue Marble—Image of Earth from Apollo 17, 1972
An ecocritical description of NASA’s Blue Marble encourages the viewer to consider what is materially related to— even if visually absent from—this image of Earth. This photograph seems to bear no sign of humanity; the camera’s distance from the object hides the roads, factories, and cities that are actually there. Yet the creation of an image of Earth, from beyond Earth, but distributable and visible on Earth can only be human. In addition to “photograph” as medium, the curation for Blue Marble might as well list the Cold War and the Apollo rocket’s burning of fifteen tons of kerosene per second as essential elements in the image’s production. Label by Hannah London