The first photograph of a human on the surface of another world, 16-24 July 1969

Vintage chromogenic print on fiber-based paper, printed 1969, (NASA image AS11-40-5872), with NASA ID stamp "5872" (NASA MSC) and "A KODAK PAPER" watermark on verso, 25,4 x 20,3 cm

Many of the pictures taken by Armstrong will always be considered as classics of lunar surface photography. Here, rim-lit by the Sun to the left, Aldrin unfurls the aluminum sheet of the Solar Wind Experiment; behind him is the Lunar Module. Footprints can be seen in the foreground, also the linear tracks which were formed by the cable of the lunar surface TV camera. The shapes of light on the left were caused by the Sun shining almost directly into the camera lens. (Arnold, plate 17)

“Stepping out of the LM’s shadow was a shock. One moment I was in total darkness, the next in the Sun’s hot floodlight. From the ladder I had seen all the sunlit moonscape beyond our shadow but with no atmosphere, there was absolutely no refracted light around me. I stuck my hand out past the shadow’s edge into the Sun, and it was like punching through a barrier into another dimension.”
Buzz Aldrin (from his 1973 book Return to Earth)

Literature:
National Geographic, December 1969, ppg. 770-771; LIFE, 11 August 1969; LIFE, 8 August 1969, pg. 24; Moon: Man’s Greatest Adventure, Thomas, ed., ppg. 196-197; Images from Space, The Camera in Orbit, Arnold, pl. 17.