Call Me A Moon Child.

Michael Maier suggested that this blog should include Background Information. Going over my history of film and photography I had to decide how far back to go - how thorough is thorough enough. We could go as far back as the beginning of creation itself, but Charlie Kaufman  already did that in his Adaptation intro. So I settled on my first memory as that is something that must have obviously deeply affected me when looking at the details of it.

I remember sitting on the floor of the living room staring up at the flickering black and white images of our Telefunken television. There was great excitement in the room. My family was all gathered around. And sparkling streaky images came up on the screen and there was great joy in the room. I didn’t at the time really know what was going on, but have concluded afterwards that it must have been the landing on the moon in 1969 as it was televised all over the world. Our family must have felt an extra jolt of pride and joy at that moment - strong enough to burn itself into a four year olds brain - as my mother was working at the camera factory that delivered the Hasselblad cameras to the entire Apollo space program. Later on as I grew older I learned the story from my mother how Victor Hasselblad was an amazing engineer and photographer who developed this super smart camera that got to become The Space Camera - mom had gotten laminated space pictures from the factory that was proudly displayed in every room of our house. So perhaps it is true that we don’t really have a choice about what we become, perhaps the environment is so strong in affecting our behavior that we are just puppets of our circumstances. Either way I am grateful for the early respect that was installed in me for the power of visual communication.

If you want more of the moon landing see “In The Shadow Of The Moon“