The Most Influential Photo Ever Taken
I’m going to tell you the story of the most influential photograph ever taken by mankind.
This is a photograph of the earth, taken from above the lunar landscape. Earthrise. It was snapped by astronaut William Anders on Christmas Eve, 1968, during the Apollo 8 lunar mission. Space exploration was still in its incipient stages, and man had yet to land on the moon, yet this was the first time we were able to see ourselves from this far-flung vantage point.
50 years later, the photograph has been printed on numerous postal stamps, and has been deemed by Galen Rowell, an influential nature photographer, as the ‘most influential environmental photograph ever taken’.
This is the story of ‘Earthrise’.
The lunar capsule was coming up around the moon for the third time, when Anders gazed upon this sublime sight. He turned to fellow astronaut Frank Borman, remarking upon the prettiness of the scene. He reached for his Hasselblad camera, one which had been brought aboard this mission for the purposes of highly specific scientific imagery, but which he nonetheless decided to use for this capture.
This was the Apollo 8 mission, one of the earlier NASA projects intended to lay the groundwork for the subsequent moon landings in Apollo 11 and onwards. The spacecraft was sent to orbit the moon several dozen times, make useful scientific observations, and return home. It was the first time that humans had left earth with an actual destination in mind: the moon. The sight of our planet from this vantage point was thus unique for humankind; before this moment in history, no one had ever seen an earthrise.
As the scene folded before him, Anders opened up a box of coloured, Ektachrome film. This was a time preceding the digital medium, and he knew that only a coloured image would be able to encapsulate the gravitas of the scene before him. He hastily loaded the film into the camera, aware that the transient panorama would be gone before long, as the lunar surface was fast receding beneath his speeding spacecraft. He took a shot. Then he took another, and another, and another.
Anders was not a professional photographer, not by any stretch of the imagination. He had been brought upon this mission by virtue of his masters degree in nuclear engineering, but by coincidence of his ‘scientific duties’, was assigned all photographic duties. And on this particular morning (or evening, depending on how you wish to calculate time on a cosmic timeframe), he was the author of one of the greatest photographs in history.
“It really undercut my religious beliefs. The idea that things rotate around the pope and up there is a big supercomputer wondering whether Billy was a good boy yesterday? It doesn’t make any sense. I became a big buddy of [atheist scientist] Richard Dawkins.”
— William Anders
The beauty of the photograph was that it depicted earth in all its resplendent beauty, unaltered by human constructs. It was seen not as a cartographer would have you see it, with divisions, borders, and boundaries, and colour coded countries, but rather as an innocent orb of blue and green. Oceans, land, clouds, unencumbered by our trifling human interpretations.
This beauty was not lost on the denizens of this fragile planet. It inspired many to think of the earth as a singular whole, and not as a collectino of fragmented parts. In 1970, the Comprehensive Clean Air Act was passed. Earth Day was created in March of the very same year. The Environmental Protection Agency was founded in 1970 as well. Doctors Without Borders was founded in the following year. The Clean Water Act is passed in 1971, and the Endangered Species Act is passed in 1972. This is clearly the inspiration of space travel operating on our cultural forces, and the power of this photo cannot be overstated.
Amongst the ugliness of the Vietnamese war and other prevailing conflicts of the time, we, as a species, found the time to start thinking about the earth. And it all started because we were finally able to see ourselves for what we were.
“We went to the moon, and discovered earth.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson
Psychologists have identified a phenomenon known as the Overview Effect, which is a cognitive shift in awareness amongst certain astronauts who have had the privilege of viewing earth from outer space. Astronauts have described the sensation in numerous ways, but ultimately seem to agree on the conclusion that the frailty of our planet, ‘hanging in the void’, evokes a sense of protectiveness and empathy, and engenders the will to protect our pale blue dot.
I often hear people wonder aloud why we are still bothered with spaceflight in an age of such distressing terrestrial conflicts. Why go to space, they ask, when we have many more issues to solve down here on earth?
This photograph illustrates why.
We need to stop understanding space exploration as a childish folly, or as some billionaires’ whim to travel the cosmos. Modern mavericks of space exploration such as Elon Musk understand that short term investments in spaceflight may be costly, but the long term rewards are incalculable. The societal and cultural impact of dreaming about something greater than ourselves often generates deep reverberations amongst all walks of life, leading to the betterment of society as a whole.
‘As goes the health of spacefaring ambitions, so too goes the spiritual, the emotional, the intellectual, the creative and the economic ambitions of a nation.’
— Neil deGrasse Tyson
If you still aren’t convinced, here are some modern day technologies which have their roots in space-exploration related innovations:
- Computer mice
- LEDs (used in your computer and smartphone screens)
- LASIK (based on eye tracking technology)
- Firefighting equipment
- Wireless headphones
Upon splashing down back on earth, several days after the photo was taken, William Anders thought to himself that it wouldn’t be long before he would be again gazing at earth, except this time from a space hotel. He remarked that he believed he would soon be able to “take [his] wife into orbit and view the beautiful planet we live on.” Over 50 years later, his vision has yet to be realised.
We, as human civilisation, stopped dreaming. After the Apollo missions successfully brought man onto the moon, we no longer saw great purpose in space exploration. And as the threat of the Cold War waned, and NASA funding was trimmed back to it’s pre-war level, it seems we have forgotten all about our erstwhile spacefaring ambitions.
Thankfully, that trend appears to be in the rear-view mirror, as enterprising individuals have initiated the renaissance of space exploration, on the back of privately funded ventures such as Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin. It is time that we start dreaming again, because, in my view, that is one of the things that makes this life worth living.
The thing that strikes me the most about this image is the darkness that surrounds us. The surrounding vacuum is as dark as sin, and there is nothing but us for as far as the eye can see. No one is coming to save us from ourselves. We’re small. We’re alone. And I think it would be best for humankind if we never forget that fact.
