David DeVorkin, senior curator of astronomy and the space sciences, National Air and Space Museum

The year 2019 marks the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing on July 20, 1969. Photography played a significant role both in preparing for the mission and in shaping the cultural consciousness of the event. By the Light of the Silvery Moon: A Century of Lunar Photographs features works ranging in date from the 19th century to the “space-age” 1960s. The event Photographing the Moon, held on October 3, 2019, at the National Gallery of Art, celebrated this exhibition by inviting three curators from the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum to give talks on the intertwined histories of photography and space exploration. To open the event, David DeVorkin presented an illustrated inquiry into the interplay of the eye and hand with the photographic process, looking at developments over the past 150 years and their impact on the Apollo program.