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Lot 261
[Apollo 11] BUZZ ALDRIN WALKING ON ANOTHER WORLD Neil Armstrong, 16-24 July 1969
14 – 28 April 2025, 12:00 CEST
Paris, Avenue Hoche€2,600 - €3,600
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[Apollo 11] BUZZ ALDRIN WALKING ON ANOTHER WORLD
Neil Armstrong, 16-24 July 1969
Printed 1969.
Vintage chromogenic print on fibre-based Kodak paper [NASA image AS11-40-5902].
Numbered "NASA AS11-40-5902" in red in the top margin, with NASA caption and "A Kodak Paper" watermark on the reverse (issued by NASA Manned Spacecraft Centre, Houston, Texas).
20.3 x 25.4 cm. (8 x 10 in.)
Historical context
This iconic Apollo 11 photograph captures the profound isolation and significance of humankind's first steps beyond Earth. Buzz Aldrin walks beside the foil-wrapped landing gear of Eagle, the Lunar Module that brought him and Neil Armstrong to the Moon. He appears to gaze back at the lander, perhaps reflecting on the extraordinary reality of standing on another world.
Surrounded by the silence of a vacuum in one-sixth gravity, Aldrin experiences a world untouched by life, hearing only the crackling of communications, the hum of his life-support system, and the rhythmic echo of his own breathing inside his helmet.
In his gold-plated visor, a tiny reflection of Neil Armstrong, the photographer, immortalizes the moment from his perspective.
Printed 1969.
Vintage chromogenic print on fibre-based Kodak paper [NASA image AS11-40-5902].
Numbered "NASA AS11-40-5902" in red in the top margin, with NASA caption and "A Kodak Paper" watermark on the reverse (issued by NASA Manned Spacecraft Centre, Houston, Texas).
20.3 x 25.4 cm. (8 x 10 in.)
Historical context
This iconic Apollo 11 photograph captures the profound isolation and significance of humankind's first steps beyond Earth. Buzz Aldrin walks beside the foil-wrapped landing gear of Eagle, the Lunar Module that brought him and Neil Armstrong to the Moon. He appears to gaze back at the lander, perhaps reflecting on the extraordinary reality of standing on another world.
Surrounded by the silence of a vacuum in one-sixth gravity, Aldrin experiences a world untouched by life, hearing only the crackling of communications, the hum of his life-support system, and the rhythmic echo of his own breathing inside his helmet.
In his gold-plated visor, a tiny reflection of Neil Armstrong, the photographer, immortalizes the moment from his perspective.
Footnotes
The stark contrast between human presence and the untouched lunar landscape is striking. The long, dark shadow of the LM footpad stretches across the surface, emphasizing the low-angle lighting and the Moon's airless environment. The foreground is littered with footprints—the first ever made by humans on the Moon—contrasting sharply with the undisturbed regolith beyond.
[NASA's original caption for the photograph]
Astronaut Edwin E. Aldrin Jr., lunar module pilot, walks on the surface of the Moon near a leg of the Lunar Module during the Apollo 11 extravehicular activity (EVA). Astronaut Neil A. Armstrong, Apollo 11 commander, took this photograph with a 70mm lunar surface camera. The astronauts' boot prints are clearly visible in the foreground. While Armstrong and Aldrin descended in the Lunar Module Eagle to explore the Sea of Tranquillity, astronaut Michael Collins, command module pilot, remained with the Command and Service Module Columbia in lunar orbit.
As they took their first steps on another world, Aldrin and Armstrong reflected on the experience:
"I quickly discovered that I felt balanced comfortably upright only when I was tilted slightly forward. I also felt a bit disoriented—on Earth, when one looks at the horizon, it appears flat; on the Moon, so much smaller than the Earth and quite without high terrain, the horizon in all directions visibly curved away from us."
—Buzz Aldrin (Return to Earth, 1973)
"We felt very comfortable. It was, in fact, in our view both preferable to weightlessness and to the Earth's gravity."
—Neil Armstrong
Literature
LIFE, 11 August 1969
TIME, 8 August 1969, p. 23
Moon: Man's Greatest Adventure, Thomas, ed., p. 196
Apollo Expeditions to the Moon (NASA SP-350), Cortright, ed., p. 202.
Watch more
CLICK HERE: Apollo 11 Moonwalk Part 2 of 4