Notebook Reliefs - Moon

This notebook features images that, although they appear to come straight out of the Apollo program of the 1960s, are actually taken from *The Moon, Considered as a Planet, a World, and a Satellite*, a work by James Nasmyth (1808–1890) published in 1874. Since it was technically impossible to photograph the Moon at high magnification, he sculpted plaster models based on his observational drawings and photographed them against a black background using natural or artificial light. Assisted by the Englishman James Carpenter (1840–1899), an astronomer at the Greenwich Observatory, he produced a spectacular book aimed at “recreating the unique conditions one would encounter during a stay on the lunar surface,” which also stands out for its innovations in photomechanical reproduction.