Christie's top lot is an unreleased photograph of Neil Armstrong, taken during the Apollo 11 mission in 1969 when he became the first human to set foot on the moon. Also up for auction...Buzz Aldrin may have been the second man to step foot on the moon, but he is the first man to take a selfie on the moon and what may be the first "selfie" is available too. Pretty cool...what a trend setter.
Christie's will also be auctioning off more than 2,400 photographs that they say document "the golden age of space exploration" and is the most comprehensive collection ever to come to the auction. That's an incredible statement when you think of the collections over the years.
James Hyslop, Head of Science and Natural History at Christie’s in London, told Reuters-
“This is probably humanity’s greatest creative and ingenious achievement, landing a man safely on the surface of the moon and bringing him back to Earth,”
“Looking at some of these images, you can really be transported to the surface of the moon.”
NASA did not release many of these photos that were taken during during the Apollo 11 mission in 1969. A private collector Victor Martin Malburet has taken these unreleased iconic photos and curated The “Voyage To Another World” collection, which has been a project that has taken decades.
Hyslop said-
“Most of the astronaut photographs that you see from Apollo 11 are of Buzz Aldrin. But just at the end of the mission, Buzz actually took the camera and took a quick snap of Neil. And this is forgotten about in the aftermath of the successful mission. And it was only rediscovered in the 80s,”
Photo Credit: Getty Images
More Christies.com