Week 15 - 2020
Toy with a «film camera». Preus museum Collection (photo: Helle K. Hagen AS)
Fly me to the Moon
If there’s one object most of us would bring for a journey into outer space, it would surely be a camera. The astronauts who travelled to the Moon in the 60s and 70s carried with them the specially made Swedish Hasselblad Camera. Reputedly, one of these cameras became Sweden's first satellite when astronaut Michael Collins lost it during a space walk in 1966.
Since that time a number of satellites and pictures have appeared in and from space. We have seen photos of the little blue globe of ours; we’ve seen ourselves from the outside and within the dark universe. But the mystery and the dreams surrounding what it's actually like on other planets, as well as the prospect of living on Mars, doesn't die out. As late as a few weeks ago NASA shared a fascinating panorama image from Mars, assembled by a collection of a thousand images.
The dream of outer space might be a bit childish, much like this little toy rocket with a boy and his camera. Still, the dream is dead serious. During the Cold War the race for space conquest was an important part within the great conflict. Fifty years after a human, in 1961, was the first to walk in space, UN asserted the 12th of April as a day to perpetuate the exploration of space as an endeavour towards sustainable development, and purely for peaceful purposes.
This little toy could act as a nice symbol for a child's unwavering curiosity, the future on the blue globe, and the cameras wonderful capability in collecting stories, and sometimes people.