The Whole Earth

NASA's "Blue Marble" Photograph Fifty Years On

Dec 7, 2022 – Dec 9, 2022

AbstractA series of talks, workshops, performances and artworks devoted to revisiting the impact and legacy of NASA's "Blue Marble" photograph.

Description

It was, according to activist and cyberculture visionary Stewart Brand, the image “that reframed everything.” On the fiftieth anniversary of NASA's famed “Blue Marble” photograph (1972), the University of Portsmouth hosted a series of public-facing talks, film screenings, workshops and commission a range of vibrant artworks that reassess its historical impact and enduring legacy. As a talismanic icon in US (and global) visual culture, the Blue Marble not only brought much-needed publicity and recognition to NASA’s flagging space program, but quickly intervened in a range of political, cultural and scientific debates. For the burgeoning environmentalist movement, the photograph captured our planet in all its beauty and fragility; emblazoned across posters and publications, it quickly became the movement’s defining visual symbol. More broadly, the Blue Marble so often serves as a launch pad from which discussions and conflicts emerge over the ethics of space travel – the dreams of intergalactic conquest vs the realities of economic and social inequality – the United States’ place on the global stage, and, indeed, the biological organisation and functioning of the earth itself. From Greenpeace to Gaia to Google Maps, from the tranquillity of outer-space to social unrest on Earth, it is an image inextricably associated with a United States riding the crest of its transformative “long sixties,” and a timeless symbol of international resonance.

Taking place over three days, the free public talks approached this image from a variety of perspectives. On day 1, Wednesday 7 December, 2022, talks delivered by historians and American Studies scholars placed the Blue Marble within a wider US historical and political context.

Day 2, Thursday 8 December, featured talks from historians of American art and Hollywood cinema, who discussed the Blue Marble’s impact on visual culture of the 1970s and beyond. An online workshop reflected on popular cinematic revisionings of the whole earth.

Day 3, Friday 9 December, offered an assessment of the Blue Marble’s impact on scientific and philosophical thought. With a retrospective on James Lovelock’s iconic Gaia theory, as well as discussions of the Blue Marble’s influence on the technological imagination, the day reflected on the image’s ongoing impact on innovators in the US and internationally.