“After the Lunar Module had landed … and as we breathlessly awaited the first steps on the moon, I was casting about for some novel way to record that moment. … I walked across the road and positioned that sign with its greeting so that the moon was peeking over its top right corner then took this image on a humble Brownie box camera.“ – B.Weaver II
For a long, long time, I’ve searched the web over for this photograph or something like it. I absolutely knew the shot existed, but I did not know where or in what form. So base & so simple an impulse, thousands of people must have taken parallel pictures on July 20, 1969 (exactly 44 years ago tonight). Not only of the moon, but the moon in the ghostly-thin margin that men were upon it. Not just then, but the very first moments that we were upon it… like finding the mud prints of the very first fish to slither out of the sea. Not from the moon, but from the earth. Not from the fish, but from the sea. Here it is.
PS. Tonight, go walk beneath the moon & let your eyes adjust to the low light, head down, watching your feet press one-by-one on the earth. Then look up & – wham – instantly realize just how far away & far out it is that we actually stood on that rocky outpost.