Full Moon
   Michael Light
  1999 Alfred A. Knopf, New York USA
   ISBN: 0375406344


The missions of the Apollo astronauts to the surface of the Moon & back yielded 32,000 extraordinarily beautiful photos, the record of a unique human adventure. Each page conveys the excitement, disorientation & awe that the astronauts felt as they were shot into space, explored an alien landscape & looked back home from space.

If you've ever wanted to see what space flight was like, Full Moon is the book. If you've ever wanted to get close to the surface of our nearest celestial body, Full Moon is the book.

With large expressive photographs from the Apollo Missions with no words to distract you, you can stare at the inferno that propels a rocket the length of a football field & then some; you can see the cluttered crew quarters & you can see an astronaut with his head out of a hatch looking at our lovely Blue Marble; you can see a hurricane in the making & the awesome curve of the Moon up close.

Footsteps on the moon lead you to an astronaut in a vast still grey landscape; a lunar vehicle like a mad scientist's dune buggy sits waiting on the Moon's surface with the odd patches of color & all those massive & minute Moon Rocks.

The monochromatic landscapes, set upon pages of deep black space are impressive & the ordinary, everyday snapshots of astronauts at home in their space ship are mesmerizing.

That's us through the port hole - far away in the darkness of space.

Then the words come - Apollo Mission Data; Andrew Chaikin's essay: The Farthest Place is the story of the missions with the astronauts' impressions. Michael Light's: The Skin of the Moon tells his story from a photographer's fascination with landscapes out of this world.

The section: A Note on the Photographs is like revisiting the color plates all over again only this time there are the stories to the photos.

Andrew Chaikin is the author of the definitive study of the Apollo missions: A Man on the Moon the basis of the award-winning television series: From the Earth to the Moon.

Michael Light is an artist & photographer based in San Francisco. His work is in the collections of The Center for Creative Photography & the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. He is the author of the photo-novel, Ranch.

A wonderful, unique & breathtaking volume.
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Rebecca